It seems to me that you have a generation or two of people who think that things that are powerful will always remain that way, and it's only by virtue of the application of power that things become or remain powerful, rather than by being something beneficial or useful to many people who then empower the thing by making use of it.
The problem is that such a mistaken belief about the nature of the world is eventually going to run up against reality, and that's exactly what we are seeing. People who pursue power make their way into positions of powerful institutions, and then run them into the ground thinking that those powerful institutions can't possibly fail because they are powerful and all that exists is power.
In my view that's what we're seeing with stuff like people trying to take over media franchises, where they think that they can do anything they want with those media franchises afterwards and everyone will just sit there and continue buying it. We're also seeing it with respect to the US dollar system where obviously there's a lot of power that comes with being in the world's reserve currency, but you can't be the world's reserve currency while also using that currency to impose your values upon the rest of the world. Eventually, the rest of the world is just going to say "that's fine, impose your values upon yourself and we will use something else"
It goes to show that the neomarxists who only look at anything through the lens of power are incorrect. Power can come from many different things, either from violence such as the barrel of a gun like what mao believed, or alternatively through service such as proper capitalistic pursuits where the only way that you can convince someone to give you more of your money is to provide something that they want at a price that they want to pay. Arguably, the greatest generation of Americans understood this deeply which is why rather than absolutely crush Germany and Japan after they lost world war ii, and they helped to rebuild those countries into something new. This soft power is something that China also makes use of, and it's a lot harder to cultivate and maintain, but if you do things right it can mean that you have a much larger power base than if you try to cultivate power through hard power such as violence or other forms of hard coercion.
The problem is that such a mistaken belief about the nature of the world is eventually going to run up against reality, and that's exactly what we are seeing. People who pursue power make their way into positions of powerful institutions, and then run them into the ground thinking that those powerful institutions can't possibly fail because they are powerful and all that exists is power.
In my view that's what we're seeing with stuff like people trying to take over media franchises, where they think that they can do anything they want with those media franchises afterwards and everyone will just sit there and continue buying it. We're also seeing it with respect to the US dollar system where obviously there's a lot of power that comes with being in the world's reserve currency, but you can't be the world's reserve currency while also using that currency to impose your values upon the rest of the world. Eventually, the rest of the world is just going to say "that's fine, impose your values upon yourself and we will use something else"
It goes to show that the neomarxists who only look at anything through the lens of power are incorrect. Power can come from many different things, either from violence such as the barrel of a gun like what mao believed, or alternatively through service such as proper capitalistic pursuits where the only way that you can convince someone to give you more of your money is to provide something that they want at a price that they want to pay. Arguably, the greatest generation of Americans understood this deeply which is why rather than absolutely crush Germany and Japan after they lost world war ii, and they helped to rebuild those countries into something new. This soft power is something that China also makes use of, and it's a lot harder to cultivate and maintain, but if you do things right it can mean that you have a much larger power base than if you try to cultivate power through hard power such as violence or other forms of hard coercion.
- replies
- 1
- announces
- 1
- likes
- 5