Psychopaths Have (Mis)Shaped History and Rule the World

When I wrote the blog post on Psychopaths, Corporations, and Government, and Rise of the IMPs, I had inferred that psychopaths rise to power in government in the same way they are attracted to the corporate structure as described in the book "Snakes in Suits". At the time I did not know that there was an entire book written about psychopaths in government.

Here is the book:

Political Ponerology

"Ponerology" is the study of evil, from the greek word for evil, Poneros. Evil can be studied outside of theology, in the same way ethics can. Author Michael Shermer discusses this in his book "The Science of Good and Evil". The basic premise is that the desire to help others is hard-wired into the species, in order to help preserve it. However, Shermer misses the fact that 0.8% of the population, the psychopaths, do not have this desire.

Political Ponerology studies how psychopaths take over political systems, which is then called a Pathocracy. (The term psychopath has a more specific meaning than sociopath, which is a more colloquial term.) The Polish author, Andrew Lobaczewski, was part of a group of psychologists in Poland who were secretly studying pathocracies while under Soviet rule. They were doing this research in fear of discovery and harsh punishment. Psychopaths don't like being studied and are afraid of being discovered. He escaped to the U.S.A. and showed a manuscript to an influential fellow Pole, who praised the work, but somehow got the book suppressed for many years. This Pole is Zbigniew Brzezinski, Obama's Foreign Policy Secretary, whom I've written about before. He authored a book about the U.S. strategy for controlling the oil in Eurasia.

In the book "Without Remorse: The Disturbing World of Psychopaths Among us", psychologist Robert Hare explains that born psychopaths comprise about 0.8% of the population and are not "insane" - they understand what society considers "right" and "wrong", understand the consequences of their actions, but have no conscience, remorse, guilt, nor empathy. They are completely callous and self serving, but they have free will and make conscious choices.

They consider themselves superior to the rest of us, who are "weak" because we are subservient to our emotions, and thus "deserve" to be taken advantage of. They consider people around them as objects, including spouses and children, if they have them. At the same time they feel oppressed, because they desire some things which "normal" people find reprehensible and would punish them for. As an example, an Austrian man was arrested for imprisoning his daughter for over 20 years in the basement. In his mind, all he wanted was to keep his daughter in the basement, nothing wrong with that, but normal people came and took her away and jailed him. A psychopathic convict in jail for nearly killing someone in a bar fight, said, "It's not fair, he only spent 2 months in the hospital, while I'm in jail for 2 years!".

Many psychopaths become con artists, or go to jail, but many stay just below the radar, moving through society, taking advantage of everyone around them. Only about 1 in 25,000 become serial killers. Not all of them particularly enjoy killing people. Some of them become priests, lawyers, doctors, managers, or politicians. These are the "successful psychopaths". They become master manipulators, using their skill at feigning emotions. They are fascinated by psychology, which many study in order to improve their manipulation skills. Many prison psychiatrists have been fooled by their psychopathic subjects. They are glib and are expert, smooth liars. They are obsessed with manipulation and power over others. They move like predators among us.

At a young age, they realize they are very different, and practice making the proper emotional expressions in the mirror. They become actors on the stage of life. (They sometimes invoke the wrong, puzzlingly inappropriate emotional expression due to the lack of real emotions other than "proto emotions" such as rage and pleasure.) This is what psychologist Hervey Cleckley called "The Mask of Sanity", in his downloadable book of the same name. This Mask of Sanity can be turned into the Mask of Ideology - psychopathic politicians can say and do the "right" things in the public light to attract voters, things which they do not care about in the slightest. Think of the caricature "god-fearing" politician who in his private life, hires homosexual prostitutes, snorts cocaine, and accepts bribes. Think of the caricature "progressive" politician who preaches saving the environment and helping the poor, while jetting in a private plane and screwing people over by voting for the Mother of All Bailouts.

Communist and "cult of personality" totalitarian regimes, the Nazis, and historic baddies such as Pol Pot, Genghis Khan and Mao Tse Tung, are some very obvious psychopaths and pathocracies. However, remember that not all psychopaths would be as extreme as those, and there are probably many more "moderate" ones. Remember they are obsessed about power and manipulation, and not necessarily about killing (however they may find the death of one, or of thousands,"necessary" for their personal aims, and will have no qualms about it).

Here are a few things some politicians have done which suggest psychopathy

• Bush's wars of aggression, which have killed 10s or 100's of thousands.
• Clinton lying smoothly under oath (no I don't care that he got a blowjob from an intern), and his and Hillary's Whitewater scam
• Madeleine Albright saying that the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children was "worth it"
• Margaret Thatcher saying that her dream was to lead the nation into war and win (we are like pawns to psychopaths)

And then here are 2 articles about Obama's narcissism (many narcissists are psychopaths and other narcissists can be considered as mild psychopaths):

1. Is Obama a Narcissist? The article is written by Sam Vaknin, the world's only known "successful psychopath" who has come forward, and is the subject of the documentary I, Psychopath.
2. This one discusses his callous, inappropriate reaction to the Fort Hood Massacre.

In Political Ponerology, Lobaczewski describes the structure in a Pathocracy. It is like a pyramid, like most hierarchical stuctures. Psychopaths are capable of functioning in hierarchies as long as they think it lets them achieve their goals. At the top are the true psychopaths. Below them are the "new bourgeoisie" - those that benefit from the Pathocracy - many are probably the borderline psychopaths. Then below them are whom Lobaczewski calls the "Right wing Authoritarians" (an unfortunate choice of words). I prefer calling them the "Authoritarian Ideologues", because authoritarians can be either right wing or left wing (as per today's nomenclature). Ideologues are those who strongly believe in ideology, such as those Lenin referred to as "useful idiots", those that spread ideology to help you gain power.

Lobaczewski says that these "authoritarians" comprise 15% of the population, who have the personality type which have a need to follow and to exert authority. They are the types who believe very strongly in ideology, such as the caricature "liberals" and the caricature "conservatives", and want to tell everybody how to live their lives; they are the busybody judgmental types, the little-Nazi HOA types, and the TSA types - the bossy types who order you around and are obsequious in the face of authority above them.

The rest of the population, or about 80%, are along for the ride, living their lives, oblivious to the wholesale manipulation they are subject to.

I have seen discussions of Lobaczewski's book on "liberal" or "progressive" forums - they make the predictable mistake of calling Bush a psychopath then being blind to the psychopaths who spew "progressive" ideology. They do not understand the philosophy of the Fabian Socialists (who are members of the elite of society), who latched onto the idea of spreading Welfarism as a means of gaining more power, because the elite control government, Welfarism requires more government power, and "helping the less fortunate" tugs at your heartstrings and is thus difficult to argue against because the desire to help others is hardwired into the species. e.g. "You don't like welfare, you must be heartless!"

The Progressives do not realize that all Progressivism requires Authoritarianism and Centralization of Power, which attracts psychopaths. They do not realize that the Progressives of the 1930s were admirers of the National Socialist party of Germany (Nazi party) for their desire to shape society in the collectivist mold (but distanced themselves when the Nazis started killing Jews). They do not realize that Progressivism was fueled by PR campaigns of Big Business, in order to enable "regulation" which was actually Corporatism and Cartelization. (See page 82 of this PDF: The Case Against the FED) They do not see that while Bush is an obvious war-monger, the Democrats supported the war with votes and that Obama is the same, and is a Fabian Socialist. (This is not to say that the Neoconservatives don't promote Socialism - their voting supports it).

The "liberals" do not understand that the mass media controls the debates and feeds a false left-right paradigm which is meant to control thought and distract from the real issues of erosion of liberties. They do not understand that any attempt to shape society from the top-down is a form of Elitism and Utopianism. Those that believe in it do so because they feel superior and better than the rest (elitism), and that everyone else should be forced to act the same way (authoritarianism), in order to make society better by force (Utopianism), led by the most moral members of society. And there is the conundrum - the psychopaths will rise to power, not the virtuous. If two people run for the same office, and one is a good person and the other is evil and doesn't play by the rules, who would win? How can you expect that the ruling elite will be comprised of individuals that are more morally upright than the masses they rule?

Picture the bible-thumping "right wingers" who want government to force everyone to their way of thinking, and their nemesis, the "liberals" or "left wingers", who want government to force everyone to *their* way of thinking. They think their enemy is each other, but they are played against each other. (And most of the 80% along for the ride think the truth is between the two sides, not realizing that the answer is neither). The "wingers" are all from the 15% portion who are Authoritarians. They are an important tool for the psychopaths to exert their control over society.

The science of psychopathy as researched by Lobaczewski and Hare shows that positions of power attract the psychopaths, and thus any top-down method of shaping society, regardless of good intentions, by means of centralization and use of power, is doomed. The correct solution is self-rule and de-centralization or dismantling of power - and the only significant power is that which is backed by violence or threat of violence. Remember that in any government system, only government has the legal monopoly on violence. (e.g. you break its laws, and men with guns and badges arrest you.)

This pervasive thinking is the Myth of the Benevolent Dictator - the belief that "if only the right person gets into power, everything will be better". The "liberals" believe that "if only those true to the progressive ideology" get into power, everything will be better. Even if you could get a "good"person into office there wielding power righteously for a while, the next one will likely be a psychopath and will use that exact same power for evil.

This reviewer of Lobaczewski's book had this to say:

In this book I have learned that most, if not all of the governments of the world, have been taken over by a pathological infection from just a small group of psychopaths who understand the psychology of normal people to a very high degree and they have corrupted these governmental structures to the very core. These psychopaths have silently, but with mind boggling persistence and stealth moved in and taken over and hollowed out the very soul of humanity using lies and deception as their weapons of choice. These psychopaths, this inhuman race of pathological deviants, who do not have the capacity to feel conscience and feel the pain of another, now literally rule the world.

One psychopath can terrorize an entire town, even an entire city. The majority of normal people are now ruled by a minority of psychopaths and they have basically made our governments criminal networks. Criminal governments. Those working for these governments are now working for what basically is a criminal enterprise and they don't see it because they are in it and profit by it, yet it is these people who are determining our future and the future of our children.

Mankind is becoming a willing slave to the pathocratic structures created by the inhuman obsessive greed of this small percentage of humanity that cannot feel conscience. This book is a MUST READ. Only by knowing what we are dealing with can we do anything about it without going in circles. We are dealing with an intelligent predator that feeds on the soul of humanity. It seems to me that there are only a very few who are now speaking of psychopathy and (macrosocial) Evil in the way Lobaczewski speaks of it, since it has been suppressed for so long, but knowledge of the behavior of these deviants, these snakes in suits, is essential so we can recognize this "predator within our midst" and then do something about it with any real and lasting results

History has been disproportionately shaped by psychopaths - it makes sense that wars happen because of psychopaths. However, not only overt war-mongers had to have been psychopaths, but every stinking empire-hungry conqueror and power-hungry leader in history had to have been one - including the first caveman who convinced his fellow cavemen to take over the next cave by force. The sorry state of today's world with the seemingly intractable poverty and hunger despite our technological prowess is most easily explained by the fact that governments are pathocracies.

One may argue that psychopaths are produced by a recessive gene which the human species needs in order to progress, that the large-scale organization required by the rise of the early great civilizations such as Mesopotamia, Sumeria, and Egypt would not have happened without psychopaths. This may be so, but given today's technology and telecommunications, such large-scale organizations are possible without the power backed by violence that governments (and their psychopaths) have. Just look at Sony, Apple, or Toyota. They are large scale organizations capable of organizing tens or hundreds of thousands of people through mutually agreed voluntary contracts, in order to achieve a common goal - create products which customers voluntarily purchase. This, by the way, is the essence of the free market, which is based on freedom to trade and to enter into voluntary contracts. In the absence of violence or coercion, all agreements are reached voluntarily, through persuasion and reason.

Freedom and Free Markets produce the best possible outcomes for the majority. Freedom and Free Markets are not perfect and do not produce a Utopia - it is not about shaping society - and it cannot produce the ideal result for everyone at any given time. But given the science of psychopathy there is nothing better.

The Gatekeepers

Most of the population fall for the Left vs. Right argument, believing that the Democrat vs. Republican debate is valid. They are simply playing out the role of Good Cop / Bad Cop.

If the left/right axis were simply socialism vs. capitalism, then I am a right winger. (Note that today we have CORPORATISM and NOT true capitalism).

However, many issues are mixed into the "left/right" axis, seemingly at random. The human tendency to identify with a group makes them want to identify with either the left or the right, at first due to their pet issue, and are brainwashed later into accepting all the other stands of that side on all the other issues.

• Who decided that the right would be pro gun rights?
• Who decided that the right would be "pro life"?
  
• Who decided that the left would be pro civil liberties?
• Who decided that the left would be anti war?
• Who decided that the left would be pro gay marriage?

(Missing from this is the most important issue, the fact that the monetary system is fundamentally flawed, and inherently corrupt. )

In reality ...

• The Democrats in Congress have voted overwhelmingly to support the Iraq war. (They aren't anti war)
• The Democrats have voted overwhelmingly to support the Patriot Act. (They aren't pro civil liberties)
• The Republicans have increased spending as much, if not more than, the Democrats. (They aren't pro small government)
• The Republicans (more accurately, the NeoConservatives) have continually increased government power (They aren't pro small government)
• The Republicans (the NeoConservatives), have been pushing for more war (How is that pro-life?)
• Republican Ronald Reagan bought into Keynesian Economics (tax less but spend more, which of course increases deficits, and benefits the bankers).

As you can see, the "Left" and the "Right" each have some valid points, but on the valid points, they say one thing and do another - such as the Democrats voting to support the war and the Republicans increasing government spending.

An example of how people are manipulated by the Left/Right illusion is that all the pro gun rights people, who have forgotten that the 2nd Amendment is there so that an armed populace is a deterrent and the last stand against a tyrannical government, did NOT make a stand against the Patriot Act, an act by a tyrannical government! All because they were led to believe that the Republicans were on "their side".

And of course when someone gets it right, like Ron Paul, the "Left" and the "Right" attack him by simply screaming about his points that don't agree with the Establishment Right/Left. e.g. the "Right" screamed he's antiwar and therefore doesn't care about "national security", and the "Left" screamed that he's anti-human because he's anti-welfare. And then on Abolishing the Federal Reserve, they'll both just call it "loony".

Part of this left/right issues hodgepodge is the belief that we are screwed today by corporations and their lobbyists (true), but that the solution is more government regulation (false) and more socialism (false), because corporate abuses are a result of capitalism (false).

One other issue of the "extreme left" is that the US Government is abusive overseas (true), but that it's simply a result of simple politics (false).

Which brings me to the GATEKEEPERS, who are a potent method of making people believe in the left vs. right hoax.

Noam Chomsky for example is a LEFT GATEKEEPER.

http://www.modernhistoryproject.org/mhp/ArticleDisplay.php?Article=NoamAsset :

Noam Chomsky is often hailed as America's premier dissident intellectual, a fearless purveyor of truth fighting against media propaganda, murderous U.S. foreign policy, and the crimes of profit-hungry transnational corporations.

His formula over the years has stayed consistent: blame "America" and "corporations" while failing to examine the hidden Globalist overclass which pulls the strings, using the U.S. as an engine of creation and destruction. Then after pinning all the worlds ills on American imperialism, Chomsky offers the solution of world government under the United Nations.

Chomsky steadfastly denies the role of the Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderberg Committee, and Trilateral Commission in the creation and management of the wars and poverty he claims to condemn. When speaking on such "conspiracies," he said the following:

"It's the same with the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, all these other things the people are racing around searching for conspiracy theories about -- they're "nothing" organizations. Of course they're there, obviously rich people get together and talk to each other, and play golf with one another, and plan together-that's not a big surprise. But these conspiracy theories people are putting their energies into have virtually nothing to do with the way the institutions actually function." (Understanding Power, p. 348)

The CFR has been the dominant roundtable group pushing for a Panamerican Union by 2010 which would dissolve national borders and unite Mexico, Canada, and America under a single currency, with biometric ID cards and GPS-tracked vehicles on camera-strewn superhighways. How can Chomsky seriously claim the CFR is a "nothing organization" when their role in crafting policy is so clear? Whom is he trying to protect in denying the treasonous goals of the CFR?

Chomsky's stonewalling on the Bilderberg Group raises even more suspicions. Since 1954 the Bilderberg has served as the central brain of the New World Order, the major secret gathering for Globalist agents from across the globe. Bilderberg chairmen like Prince Bernhard and David Rockefeller have pushed for total global government, eugenics population control, engineering wars, and controlling the worldwide economy. Top politicians from America and Europe also undergo a grooming process at the Bilderberg [meetings]. Bill Clinton went in 1991 as Rockefeller's personal guest, and Tony Blair attended in 1993 before becoming Prime Minister. John Kerry attended in 2000, and John Edwards did two weeks before becoming the VP nominee in 2004.

Gatekeepers have two functions:

1. Limit discussion so that fans think that's all there is to the issues
2. Make "extreme" bullshit statements so that the opposite side (the right in this example), will summarily dismiss his valid arguments, such as Chomsky's arguments against Corporatism, by way of the Ad Hominem logical fallacy, (which FSK groups under what he calls the "Strawman Fallacy")
   

Another example of a left gatekeeper is Lyndon Larouche.

Larouche has dug up and published obscure stuff like CIA involvement in the overthrow of certain foreign governments. With respect to (2) above, he says things like:

“The Beatles had no genuine musical talent, but were a product shaped according to British Psychological Warfare Division specifications.”

And so by means of the Ad Hominem logical fallacy, the pro-right people will dismiss the notion that the CIA has overthrown legitimate foreign governments.

Larouche by the way endorses the "Alexander Hamilton" banking model -a central bank, like the Federal Reserve, which makes him a New World Order asset.

The Right Gatekeepers, most common of which are the obnoxious radio talk show hosts,
will say stupid things like "we need to invade Iraq", and then the pro-left will dismiss valid points like "we need to get rid of welfare".

Lou Dobbs is another kind of Gatekeeper. He rails against Corporatism and the North American Union, and claims that none of the presidential candidates ever talks about it, despite the fact that Ron Paul has talked against both many times! This is to prevent any real progress on these issues.

The way to identify gatekeepers is to see if they push any of the NWO (New World Order) agenda:

• central banking
• claim that the free market is the cause of recessions and/or poverty
  
• more government power or more centralization of power
• more government regulation
• more government spending
• more war / conflict
  
• less individual freedom
  

Or if they rail against some of the agenda but limiting discussion to prevent real progress (e.g. Lou Dobbs not talking about Ron Paul).

Psychopaths, Corporations, and Government

In the book "Snakes in Suits", the authors claim that the corporate world attracts psychopaths because the corporate structure rewards ruthless behavior. 1% of the general population are psychopaths. It is mostly genetic, like dyslexia.

Contrary to popular belief, most psychopaths don't become serial killers, as they don't necessarily enjoy killing.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/96/open_boss.html

[Psychopaths are not] burdened by conscience. Psychopaths have a profound lack of empathy. They use other people callously and remorselessly for their own ends. They seduce victims with a hypnotic charm that masks their true nature as pathological liars, master con artists, and heartless manipulators. Easily bored, they crave constant stimulation, so they seek thrills from real-life "games" they can win -- and take pleasure from their power over other people.
..
This is where you're likely to find such people as Ebbers, Fastow, ImClone CEO Sam Waksal, and hotelier Leona Helmsley. We put several big-name CEOs through the checklist, and they scored as "moderately psychopathic"
..
There are certainly more people in the business world who would score high in the psychopathic dimension than in the general population. You'll find them in any organization where, by the nature of one's position, you have power and control over other people and the opportunity to get something."
..
Indeed the 2003 documentary The Corporation, corporations are "sociopathic" (a synonym for "psychopathic") because they ruthlessly seek their own selfish interests -- "shareholder value" -- without regard for the harms they cause to others, such as environmental damage.

Psychopaths succeed in conventional society in large measure because few of us grasp that they are fundamentally different from ourselves. We assume that they, too, care about other people's feelings. This makes it easier for them to "play" us.

If corporations attract psychopaths, then by extension government attracts psychopaths.

When one rises above a certain level in a large corporation, one rubs elbows with government and enter the "revolving door" between the corporate world and government.


One of the ways people "debunk" a conspiracy theory is, "why would these people want more money and power than they already have?" Well, there's the answer, they are psychopaths.

Consumerism, Corporatism, and 3rd World Oppression

I recently spent several weeks vacationing in a 3rd world country with several friends. This 3rd world country was well known for their ancient civilization which was very advanced for its time. I had a wonderful time, and also had a life-changing realization.

While I was there I read John Perkins's book "Secret History of the American Empire", which is a follow up to his bestseller "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man". Reading his book while in a 3rd world country, seeing all the poverty, makes it very in-your-face. That was the reason for my realization.

Economic Hitmen are international consultants whose main job is to convince the corrupt elite of LDCs (less developed countries) around the world to accept multibillion-dollar loans for infrastructure projects and to see to it that most of this money ends up at Halliburton, Bechtel, Brown and Root, and other United States engineering and construction companies.

The loans, which come from the IMF/World Bank, are designed so that the poor nations will never be able to repay them, but will forever be enslaved by only being able to pay interest on the loan. (This is a lot like the US middle class, and the Federal government's debts - ultimately unpayable - because of the Federal Reserve and the fundamentally corrupt monetary system. The root is the Compound Interest Paradox, aka the "Debt Virus". Here's an excellent summary.) Indeed the IMF and WB are simply a part of, and controlled by, the central banks, most especially the Federal Reserve. Many, many poor nations spend more on paying interest on their foreign debt, than they do on education, basic medical care, micro-loans, and other grassroots programs for the poor.

John Perkins goes on to say that this system relies on corrupting the elite in these poor nations. These elites benefit directly by siphoning a small portion of these multibillion dollar loans, and by remaining in power. This is the carrot.

The system is driven by the corporatocracy - a term coined by Perkins to mean the collective of the transnational corporations. Wall Street benefits directly from the enslavement of the 3rd world, as they are able to tap the natural resources of these 3rd world nations at low cost. Carrol Quigley had written in his book, "Tragedy and Hope", that the world's elite keeps the 3rd world poor in order to keep the prices of natural resources low.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1119-24.htm:

“The system is set up such that the countries are so deep in debt that they can’t repay their debt,” Perkins said. “When the U.S. government wants favors from them, like votes in the United Nations or troops in Iraq, or in many, many cases, their resources – their oil, their canal, in the case of Panama, we go to them and say – look, you can’t pay off your debts, therefore sell your oil at a very low price to our oil companies. Today, tremendous pressure is being put on Ecuador, for example, to sell off its Amazonian rainforest -– very precious, very fragile places, inhabited by indigenous people whose cultures are being destroyed by the oil companies.”

John Perkins goes on to say that if the elite of a 3rd world country begins to resist or go nationalistic, the stick comes out - the CIA jackals are sent in. This is the fate that befell Jaime Roldos in Ecuador, Omar Torrijos in Panama ,and Allende in Chile. They were assassinated. Note that the CIA and Wall Street are intertwined. The jackals then install a new puppet government.

If the jackals fail, the US Military is sent in to finish the job. Young men and women are sent in to die "for their country", to kill people who "hate us for our freedoms", and to "spread democracy". This is what happened to Saddam Hussein, who, ironically, was trained by the CIA to assassinate his predecessor Qasim who was anti-corporatist, and to be a counter balance against Iran. And don't forget that in 1953, Iran's popular democratically elected Mossadegh was ousted, and the Shah put in power, by the CIA, at the behest of British Petroleum, because Mossadegh wanted his people to get a larger share of BP's oil income.

The US Military as Wall Street's attack dog has been written about back in the 1930's. Smedley Butler, perhaps the most decorated major general in the Marine Corps, wrote a book, "War is a Racket".

Such activities are those of an empire. Of all the characteristics of an empire, only one doesn't describe the USA - the presence of an emperor. However, Perkins points out that the corporatocracy acts as a virtual emperor. The root is that corporations have been conferred the rights of an individual, and none of the responsibilities. As an entity, they always look out for the bottom line. If the bottom line is helped by oppressing people in other nations, and transparency is not required, they will do it. The result is that the American Empire is hated by many people in the world.

All of this empire building is completely unbeknownst to the vast majority of the American public. This is because the mass media is controlled by the same corporations that run the corporatocracy, by the same people that run the government. This is a crucial point to understand. America is not hated for her people, who are misled by the so called free press. America is hated because of her government's foreign policy and covert operations; her government that is run by the corporatocracy; a government that does not represent "we the people".


Reading Perkins's book while visiting a 3rd world county gave me a new perspective. It doubled the intensity of my feeling that needless human suffering is very, very offensive. As a technologist, I feel there is no good reason that anybody on this planet should not have access to food, clean water, shelter, and basic medical care. The poverty in this world is a man-made, artificial creation of the people in power. They believe in materialism - that in order to have a bigger piece of the pie for themselves, they have to steal someone else's. They believe that life and economics is a zero-sum game.

I believe that wealth comes from knowledge, as Plato said. If we need more wealth, we can make the pie bigger for everyone. Almost all the wealth we have today comes from technology - medicine, transportation, communications, mass production of goods, and so on. Keeping huge swaths of the world poor, results in tremendous swaths of untapped human potential. Human potential that could have been generating more wealth for everyone.

If parts of Asia and Africa were not desperately poor and had access to higher education for the past 40 years, then technology, which is accelerating, would probably be 20 years ahead today - we'd probably have had the Internet boom in the 80's, and have the technology of the 2020's here today. The world's power elite are killing the goose that lays the golden egg, so to speak. Keeping the 3rd world poor is counter-productive. Even though natural resources would be more expensive, technological advancements continually make use of smaller and smaller amounts of natural resources to make the same product, offsetting the increased prices of resources. Ironically, by now some bright young scientist in Asia or Africa may have discovered the cure for a fatal cancer that one of the elite in the first world may be dying of today.


During my trip, an incident struck me. We had just come from a 4 day boat cruise where our group had had a discussion about how much to leave as a tip for the crew. We had settled on $8 from each of us for 4 days. This was a very paltry sum given the wonderful service we got from the crew, and the local culture's very warm-hearted manner.

The next day, while our group was hailing a taxi, some rejected a taxi because the driver wanted to charge $0.50 more than what was considered to be a good price. Our destination was Hard Rock Cafe, because 2 women in our group had wanted to purchase a Hard Rock cafe shirt or blouse with the name of the city we were vacationing in. When we got there, I was shocked at the price of the blouse - $60, in a 3rd world country. It struck me that these same women had haggled our taxi fare for 4 of us down by $0.50, and had only wanted to give $8 total tip for 4 days on a boat cruise. This was money for people who were working to feed their families. And yet, they readily coughed up $60 for a blouse made by a wealthy corporation, for a product that probably cost them $1 to make.

It was offensive to watch. I asked them about wasting time haggling $0.50 for a cab ride - they said they "don't want to be ripped off". Yet they didn't feel ripped off paying $60 for a $1 blouse.

I understand that they are exercising their own freedom and that was their free choice. However it struck me just how pervasive consumerism is. The constant barrage of "buy buy buy", and the brainwashing and instilling in consumers the idea that acquisitiveness is a good thing, is disgusting. I have posted about this before, that the educational system and the media turn people into good little consumers.

I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to have high quality stuff to enjoy per se - but making what-you-have a substitute for who-I-am is creepy. "Me, me, me", "Look at me in my enormous 4,000-lb SUV, which I bought on credit, for carrying my 30-lb child", while soldiers die for the gas that runs it. "Look at my fancy $1,000 signature purse which I bought with my credit card, because I have been brainwashed into thinking that having some Italian fashion guru's name on my bag makes me feel good about myself", all the while a big chunk of the world lives on less than $1 a day. And all this consumerism is the result of brainwashing, to enrich the loan and credit card companies and the corporatocracy.

I'm not saying you should live the life of a pauper and be happy you don't have to walk 10 miles a day to fetch water. All I'm saying is you should see through the consumerism and think twice about useless "feel-good" purchases. Especially if you have to borrow money to "afford" it.


John Perkins' proposal to end the oppression by the corporatocracy, is to effect a legal change in corporations' charters, basically requiring them to have the same responsibilities as a person, to go with their rights. Another is to greatly increase corporate transparency, so that consumers are aware of their activities, and can vote appropriately with their wallets. I have a proposal to add, that managers and members of boards of directors have reduced liability protection for a corporation's actions which are a direct consequence of their decisions.

Despite all the horror stories, Perkins is positive. He says we can turn the empire into a good thing. When an empire collapses a new one takes its place - he says we can instead turn the corporations into good corporate citizens. Corporations have many strengths - such as efficiently turning scarce resources into products that consumers want.


Today, Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate that has called a spade, a spade. He said the USA cannot afford to continue empire building. All Empires end. The ancient civilization of the country I was visiting ended, and today they are a 3rd world country. Empires end because they go bankrupt, from printing too much fiat money, and forgetting the principles that made their pre-empire nation great to begin with. In the USA, these are the principles of Individual Freedom, limited government, and the free market. Ron Paul has always voted against meddling in the internal affairs of other nations. He voted against the Iraqi Freedom Act, signed by Bill Clinton in 1998, which paved the way for the Iraq invasion. He has consistently voted against the Patriot Act, the spying powers act, and all the other acts that increase the power and spending of the government and all acts that reduce our freedoms; all of this while Hillary and Obama and most of the Democrats voted the opposite.

I believe that if Ron Paul gets elected, and if John Perkins's suggestions come to fruition, that America, followed by the rest of the world, will enter a new golden age. America can again become the shining beacon she once was, leading by example.


Before I end this post I need to say a caveat - Perkins seems to confuse capitalism and corporatism. There is a pervasive myth that capitalism always leads to corporatism. Corporatism happens when big business and government collude so that government writes laws and regulations that favor certain corporations, or favor large corporations, over small business. This leads to cartelization, which is the goal of any "regulation" that is pushed by corporations. This could either happen by government being misled, or bribed, by lobbyists. Government meddling in the free market is almost always corporatist. Many industries in the USA are heavily regulated, thus, the free market does not truly exist.

Here is a good book review that says exactly this:
http://www.mises.org/story/2416

Perkins's primary problem is in assuming that all global capitalism is sinister in the sense described in his book. Any creation of wealth that depends on coercion can hardly be considered market capitalism. It truly is sinister when a US firm, funded indirectly by taxpayer dollars, forces indigenous people offs their land in South America because geological tests suggest that oil deposits there surpass those of the Middle East. It is sinister because it violates the property rights of both the taxpayers who fund the politically well-connected firms and of the displaced peoples and cultures whose property rights are violated when they are removed from their land (often with much suffering).

But Perkins's anticapitalism really shows when he equates such activity with (say) the opening of a Nike plant a third world country. No one dies, and no cultures are killed off, when a factory opens and workers living near it can voluntarily sell their labor for wages that (economic theory tells us) exceed their next-best opportunity for work.

In developing countries, a new Nike plant is a godsend, not only because it increases capital flows to a region, but because it means that families can become autonomous, or that daughters do not have to resort to prostitution to put food on the table.

In this sense, it is perverse to assume that a Wal-Mart in China or a McDonald's in South Korea is analogous to a Bechtel in India or a Halliburton in Iraq.

Perkins's biases also show when he assumes that the West stays rich because poor countries are kept poor. This zero-sum thinking ignores those factors that cause wealth to become created in the first place. The America of the Founding Fathers — whose anti-imperial instincts Perkins rightly lauds throughout Confessions — didn't depend on international development loans or the expansion of social welfare programs to fuel the industrial revolution, but on the protection of property rights, which then rewarded saving and attracted capital. For that reason, it is no coincidence that poor countries that eschewed such loans and nurtured property rights institutions 20 years ago are those that are quickly joining the wealthy countries of today.