[new feudalism] the nanny state and the new barons

To get back to reality, Debacle commented on the earlier Iceland post:

"Just that it all sounds so extremely dire, like we have a total wipe out on the way."

My reply was, with one addition:

It's the old story of whether you look ahead and see the natural consequences of what is happening now at state, local governmental and societal level. It helps if there are two or three generations to judge by as well. Plus a lot of reading. Plus a centre right or left political stance.

I think the way it is shaping up, it is not so much a matter of living frugally in Britain [in the manner of the Icelander] but becoming increasingly dependent on the Nanny state for what we need, to the point that they can switch it on and off.

This confers power to the central regime and which regime does not wish for this? The prevailing point of view is that we will pull out of this thing economically and we may well do. However, a lot of societal changes, irreversible ones, will have occurred by then. My eyes are not on the money, which many seem to be focused on but on the societal changes. The noose is inexorably tightening.

There is some support for this point of view. It largely depends whom you read and listen to so I tried to find reasonably rational people who are writing on this, even if one of the publications below is leftist by reputation.

First, a recap of the Common Purpose business here and here, the regionalization which makes the fragmented British regions part of a small sector on the outer rim of Europe, also the citizen jury thing.

Secondly, a Wiki definition of the New Feudalism:

Among the issues claimed to be associated with the idea of neofeudalism in contemporary society are class stratification, globalization, mass immigration/illegal immigration, open borders policies, multinational corporations, and "neo-corporatism."

[The New Feudalism] mimics many of the effects of the old feudalism: an entrenched, fabulously wealthy elite, held in place by low taxes on capital and no taxes on estates; and a large and growing class of uneducated, unskilled labor brought in by unchecked immigration (both legal and illegal), and kept in check by high levels of personal debt, and high taxes on earned income (payroll, income, sales, property, etc.)

Property

Former state Senator John McClaughry, Vermont, an advocate for free enterprise, noted the following at the Second Annual N. Y. Conf. on Private Property Rights (PRFA, 1996):

Today, however, feudalism is coming back in a different guise. A growing body of legal theorists, allied with activist organizations and congenial political leaders, has been working very hard to replace the long-cherished concept of freehold property and land with the old feudal concept of social property. The ancient maxim, sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas, “use your own so as not to injure that of another,” is now held to be insufficient as a maxim for the proper use of land.

In England [the old feudalism] provided, for perhaps three centuries, protection, order, and social stability. It frustrated and discouraged trade, commerce, mobility and individual freedom. By creating a hierarchical economic, military and political order under the king, feudalism invited the abuses associated with centralized power and was, in turn, subject to the disintegrating forces that inevitably undermine centralized systems.

The system was inflexible and in the face of changing circumstances and, of course, technology changes such as the longbow and gun powder which made armed cavalry obsolete, removing the military base that had given rise to the system, feudalism declined.

The story of how [the new feudalism] came about begins probably in the 1930’s but it came to a great fruition in the 1970’s. In the 1970’s we saw legal articles expanding the power of regulation to areas of critical state concern, to wetlands, endangered species, coastlines, and an expansion of the zoning power to limit the actions of individuals.

We saw ingenious new legal doctrines developed, the public trust doctrine, the natural state preservation doctrine and even the idea, never actually litigated, of rights inherent in natural objects, which can be protected by a self-appointed guardian, in the courts.

You have to recognize who the enemy actually are. Organizations like WWF, the NWF and the Sierra club have been pushing, through environmental legislation, for what is ostensibly the rights of wildlife:

The lawyers in the audience will recognize immediately that either of these constitutional amendments would afford tremendous opportunities for creating litigation to stop any person — any landowner, any corporation, any business — from doing virtually anything that could in any way be construed to affect the environment.

Peter Shawn Taylor, in the Financial Post [June 23, 2006], said of the Canadian property situation:

The Ontario government last week announced dramatic new controls over where citizens of Toronto and its satellite cities will be able to live in the next 25 years. It is a deliberate strategy to curb suburban growth and force more people into downtown high-rise apartments -- thus frustrating the hopes and dreams of many young potential homebuyers across Southern Ontario.

There are also strict density targets of up to 400 people or jobs per hectare for urban areas, which appear wildly unrealistic. Building on previous New Feudalism planning tenets such as the Greenbelt legislation that expropriated the development potential of great swaths of farmland and the construction of massive taxpayer-subsidized public transit monuments, Queen's Park will now dictate where residents can live as well.

The steep density targets will also result in living spaces that are far less egalitarian, in keeping with our feudal theme. Australian New Urbanism critic and academic Patrick Troy (who coined the term New Feudalism in 1992) has argued convincingly that putting limits on suburban growth and creating higher-density downtowns will create greater income stratification in housing.

The workplace and the migrant

David Nicholson-Lord, in the New Statesman [yes, I know], writes of the new workplace:

Since the 1960s work has been dematerialised - turned into a quality rather than a quantity. In the UK, we no longer make things so much as do things - for other people. The rise of the service sector is one of the big stories of the late 20th century. Nine out of every ten new jobs created in the US - and more than 70 per cent of British employment - is in services. In Britain's mid-19th-century manufacturing heyday, by contrast, the figure was less than a third.

Economic power and value, like money itself, is etherealising towards a state of pure information - so services such as IT, education and media are booming. Proliferating regulation, legislation and social complexity produce a proliferation of lawyers, accountants, expert advisers. Studies by the Institute of Manpower Studies in the 1990s demonstrated the insecurity and inequality of the "new economy" of flexible labour markets, outsourcing, contract working and self-employment.

Self-employment, the institute found, was characterised by extremes of high and low pay, with the better-off over-represented in banking, finance and business, and the poorest in personal and domestic services such as hairdressing and cleaning. It was not only exacerbating wider social inequality, according to the institute; the economic penalties it carried persisted into old age. And for many "flexibly employed" people, the new economy was not an invigorating world of economic freedom and dynamism - the picture new Labour likes to portray.

[Things formerly unacceptable] ... the soaring prison population, the excesses of executive pay - the world has found it can tolerate them and moved on. Feminism has brought emancipation for some women - and subjugation for others. For both sexes, the challenge of "having it all" - a plausible theory, a not ignoble ideal - has turned into a series of empty gestures, tasks performed by surrogates in which one's only exertion is the wielding of a credit card.

Here were most of the storylines of the new feudalism: the obsession with appearances, the retinue of retainers, the narcissistic New Age-ism.

Barbara Franz says:

The proposed guest worker program will transform American citizenship from an institution based on civic membership to one based on residence rights and socio-economic status. The United States will create a permanently disadvantaged category of guest workers and further reduce the competitiveness of low-skilled minimum wage American workers.

The concept of immigration has begun to change from an inclusive notion granting equal rights to immigrants and citizens to a more ambivalent model emphasizing obligations and responsibilities of newcomers while withholding social, political, and legal rights.

Down on the farm

Robert Schubert, at Bnet, says:

The privatization of seed is but one part of the steady consolidation of economic power throughout agriculture. Large agro-industrial and retail corporations have now secured toeholds in every phase of the farming cycle: they own seed and seed patents, they control processing facilities, they dominate the retail sector, and they have even moved into financing farmers' operations.

It's as if the barons have arisen from the grave and brought the old feudal system back with them.

The corporations that control poultry and hog farming have already reduced many livestock farmers to contract labor, and grain farmers ... seem headed for the same fate. Scientific advances in the 1970s and '80s heralded a new era in agriculture. To boost flat sales, Monsanto and other agrichemical companies ventured into genetic engineering and transformed themselves into the biotechnology industry.

They bought out traditional seed companies and engineered their herbicide-resistant genes into the newly acquired seed lines. Although the lower-cost, traditional seed lines simultaneously became less available, to maximize profits the industry needed farmers to buy new seed every year instead of saving it.

David Barboza, in the NYT, says, of the new agricultural thrust:

Many farmers are worried about being squeezed by giant agricultural companies. ''There's a fear this will turn into 14th-century feudalism,'' Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said. ''Those farmers will become serfs. We're not there yet, but it may be coming.''

''The issue for many farmers is not just about the current financial situation and their income,'' said Michael Boehlje, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. ''In the back of their minds, there's a set of concerns about the long term. They want to know how they are going to participate in the new agriculture.''

To wind this up before it becomes any longer than it is, the whole thrust is towards oligopoly where the corporations which survive [the Morgans et al], become the dictators within their diversified fields of monopoly, stronger than the nominal government which is further weakened by moves like the EU and the NAU. These are the new barons.

There are distinct characteristics of the new feudalism, as listed above and the overriding one for us is loss of property rights and bodily sustenance [water and food are dictated by the new barons]. The relatively free middle class now contracts and we return to the serf class, the landed worker [repossessions etc.], the military and the ruling class.

Collapse of the economy, as Debacle mentioned is neither here nor there. If it serves its purpose, it is there. If it is time for recovery in a new social order, that will occur. It's in the hands of the new barons.