Global Guerrillas

Ouroboros -- the fate of the modern way of life

Ouroboros is the mythical snake that eats its own tail.  

In this case, it represents how modernity ends.  It eats itself.  

Specifically, the technologies the modern system accelerated, are in the process of obsoleting it.  

Eating its value, industry by industry.  Job by job.

The end of this way of life is likely to be traumatic.  

Here's more detail on this.

The National Insecurity State

I'm still writing my next book online.  

Today's pages might be of interest to GG readers.

It's entitled "The National Insecurity State"

There's also some thinking on the end of bureaucracy if you are interested.  

I suspect the only thing the US national security bureaucracy can do is launch new arms races  -- as we have done in cyber, drones, and genetics (if you count GMOs)~  

• Weaponized computer worms/viruses/malware. Legal bot networks that control/manipulate society and markets (think in terms of quant hedge funds). 
• Drones/robots. Weaponized drones that at first self-perpetuate by acquiring fuel from the environment. Weaponized drones that can self-replicate ala 3-D fabrication and scavanged materials (think rep-rap).
• Superbugs/superweeds (some may be aided by engineered modification, but all get their start due to the stupidity of growing food in monocultures). Organisms that can wipe out monocultures and cause the loss of productive farmland and crops ond a global scale. 

Bossnapping

Reuters.  Bossnapping returns to France.  The target?  A couple of unlucky Goodyear executives.  What's bossnapping?  Here's the entry for it in Wikipedia

Bossnapping:  a form of lock-in where employees detain management in the workplace, often in protest against lay-offs and redundancies, and has especially been carried out in France. The term gained wide usage in the media following a series of bossnapping incidents in the spring of 2009 in France where workers used the tactic in the context of widespread labor unrest resulting from the late 2000 recession. 

Where did the tactic originate?  Of course, kidnapping senior people in the opponents orginization has been around as long as warfare itself, however.  The popularization of using it to manipulate global media networks in a way that coerces a public company to change its behavior is new.   

That method was perfected in the conflict sandbox of the Iraqi war back in 2004.   

In 2004, Iraqi guerrillas began to target the employees of the business ventures that the US military outsourced operations to.  It was very effective (it drove up the costs and radically reduced the scope/span/rate of reconstruction).  The implication (as I wrote at the time) was that in order to this type of corporate disruption would eventually be used against executives as close to the boardroom as possible.  That occurred and it was proven successful in later years.

We'll see much more of this as the old economy begins to depopulate the protected bureaucracies where so many still work...

PS:  France is early on this because they haven't prosecuted anyone for the 2009 incidents and those events yielded positive outcomes for the union.  I suspect the US would treat it as terrorism and shoot everyone involved.

Setting the Stage for the Next Global Struggle?

What happens when the global industrial bureaucracy that ruled the world for the past couple of hundred years becomes obsolete?

We're about to find out.  

This industrial bureaucracy is being made obsolete by the very same technological change that spawned it.  Job growth has already stalled in advanced economies, and we're about to explore the downward slope.  

The last time this occurred was the destruction of agriculture as a socio-economic system.

That system didn't go peacefully.  

It took two European civil wars and numerous revolutions to finally kill it.   What will this one do?

I'm exploring the death of the industrial bureaucracy right now as part of my work on HomeFree America.  

The death of the American Dream was a big warning sign something big was in play.

Sign up to the mailing list if you want to follow along.  

I'm sure something interesting will emerge from the investigation being done there.  

April Book Project: The Death of the American Dream

Dear Friends,

As you know, I’ve spent the last couple of months working on ways to revive the American Dream over on the HomeFree America blog.

The good news is that I think we’ve made lots of progress.  I now believe a new, vibrant American Dream is not only possible, but inevitable.  A Dream so powerful, it has the potential to shape the Century.

The bad news is that most people don’t even know that the old American Dream is dead, and although they have a deep sense of unease about the future, few have been able to articulate it in a way that would allow Americans to adopt a new Dream that’s suited for success in this new Century..  

So, to get the ball rolling, I’ve got to clearly and succinctly demonstrate how the traditional American Dream failed us.

Fortunately, I’ve already done quite a bit of that, but it’s scattered across numerous sites (from this site to Global Guerrillas).

This means that my goal over the next three months, is to put all of that thinking on the death of the American Dream into a book.

To accomplish this task, I’ll put all of my work online, on this blog.  I’ll post the sections and chapters as I write them, so you can read them in real time.

When it’s done, I’ll package it up and put it on Amazon.

JR

PS:  To ensure that you don’t miss anything, make sure you sign up to the mailing list on HomeFree America.