News & Analysis
Mayor Mike ... Technocracy Is 'The Bomb'
Mayor Bloomberg Signs Emergency to Establish Odd-Even License Plate System for Gasoline Purchases to Reduce Wait Times ... Mayor Bloomberg today signed an emergency order to establish an odd-even license plate system for gasoline and diesel purchases to reduce wait times and lines at gas stations in the five boroughs. Hurricane Sandy caused significant flooding and damage to petroleum infrastructure throughout the tri-state region – causing refineries to shutdown, pumping stations to lose electricity and terminals in the region to close. – Mike Bloomberg.com
Dominant Social Theme: When there is a crisis, it's a good thing for the government to step in.
Free-Market Analysis: This isn't the biggest story in the world but it is one with clear power elite memes. The dominant social theme obviously has to do with the need for government, the larger the better. The subdominant social theme is that oil is in short supply generally and needs to be rationed at the first sign of a crisis.
It's always irritating to see "Mayor Mike" inflict his peculiar brand of technocratic crackpot-ism on New York City. Few realize it, but New York IS being run in a technocratic way.
Technocratic regimes are running Italy and Spain, too. The nomenclature comes from a 1930s movement led by M. King Hubbert (see Peak Oil) and other scientists who believed that white collar specialty professionals such as engineers and other technical experts should be in control of decision making in their respective fields.
Technocracy seeks "experts" to run things via political power. It is a variant of the Socratic vision of "philosopher kings" – those who by virtue of their innate superiority are born to rule. The corollary is that such rulers should gain their positions based on "knowledge" not political maneuvering.
Mayor Mike is a big proponent of technocracy. It's actually a fundamental tenet of the coming transition to globalism now being managed by the power elite. Ideally, government is to be run much like central banking, another insane concept that benefits from a logical presentation.
When good, gray men gather together to present authoritarian concepts in smooth, non-threatening tones, power elite nostrums are reinforced. Bloomberg is not exceptionally good at this – his contempt and arrogance are too often on display – but his perspective is perfectly aligned with the coming technocracy of governance.
We wrote about this back in September in an article entitled, "Can't the Parties Just Get Along?"
Of course, we wouldn't mind seeing America's political parties collapse. But we are not speaking of their MERGER. People like NY Mayor Mike Bloomberg want the parties to merge. He's suggested as much.
For Mr. Bloomberg, it's all about technocracy. The best "manager" is to be elected, not the best or most popular pol.
This is convenient for people like Bloomberg who are enamored of the status quo. In Bloomberg's universe, central banks print endless torrents of money and technocrats pass endless torrents of regulations to manage it. The state swells endlessly until technocrats manage all.
Government is by its nature a sloppy business that allows people to pursue their own self-interest in a concealed way. Politicians like to talk about public service but it is merely a euphemism for private enrichment.
In the case of Bloomberg, the man doesn't need a great deal more money. He's already a billionaire by virtue of his Wall Street computer services and burgeoning financial-media empire.
But his fortune is in part based on a certain worldview ... and it is the reason as well that he never misses an opportunity to impose his technocratic vision on the city. It is not "nannyism" that Bloomberg proposes (as usual, the mainstream media gets it wrong) but a form of "expertism" affiliated with the larger faux-management of technocracy.
It is the cult of the expert that Bloomberg celebrates whether he is inflicting a ban on trans fat or disallowing "big gulp" soft-drink cups. Always, Bloomberg knows better. Always government knows better. Each "emergency" order is merely a further metaphorical illustration of his argument:
The Mayor made the announcement today at City Hall ... "Last week's storm hit the fuel network hard – and knocked out critical infrastructure needed to distribute gasoline," said Mayor Bloomberg ... "Earlier today, I signed an emergency order to alternate the days that drivers can purchase gas, which is the best way to cut down the lines and help customers buy gas faster."
We have no idea whether Bloomberg's latest jeremiad will "cut down the lines" and make the buying and selling of gas more efficient. The result is likely to be the emergence of a kind of gray market of gasoline sales to drivers in desperate need of fuel on the wrong day.
Conclusion: Bloomberg won't admit to any such evolution, of course. Technocracy is "the bomb." Bloomberg (in his own mind, anyway) is a perfect technocrat.
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Posted by Danny B on 11/17/12 01:21 AM
Dear Bell, I'm a bit late but, here's an interesting page that includes new info on Hubbert. He was interested in far more than oil.
http://ppjg.me/2012/11/15/agenda-21-global-smart-grid/
There are oodles of info being pushed on the smart grid. Everyone is aware that it would give life and death power over individuals. There are tons of technical papers on every aspect of it. TONS of papers on every bit. EXCEPT the important part.
Our grid is a stupid grid,, 1930s style. Line losses can reach as high as 50%. STUPID .
No amount of esoteric metering will negate one iota of line losses. Control is the ONLY issue. Our grid is crap.
"Former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has explained the problem this way: 'We're a major superpower with a third-world electricity grid.'
Click to view link
Blackouts have increased 124%.
Click to view link
"Today, the average substation transformer in the U.S. is forty-two years old-two years older than its expected life span"
"Only 31% of the energy used to generate electricity ends up as distributed energy. When line losses, transfer stations, and the inefficiencies of the appliances and factories that use electricity are added, useable energy can drop as low as 2 percent. "
Click to view link
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Posted by philitarian on 11/10/12 08:04 AM
@mava
Thanks for the Snatch reference.
Crypto-fascist Bloomberg strikes again!
Click to view link
"Mayor Michael Bloomberg's food police have struck again!
Outlawed are food donations to homeless shelters because the city can't assess their salt, fat and fiber content, reports CBS 2's Marcia Kramer."
This one is going to backfire I believe..
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Posted by lhissink on 11/10/12 05:57 AM
It isn't a Socratic vision, but a Platonic one.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Plato transcribed Socrates.
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Posted by mava on 11/10/12 03:26 AM
The consequences of a hurricane in New York is a beautiful description of a righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by Mercury (Hermes), being white mad at people of New York disrespecting him. The best way to punish is always poetically, i.e. by letting them have it, all that they want, without Mercury, whom they hate so much.
Mercury is a god of commerce. New Yorkers hate commerce. They hate profits. They have a special word for anyone who throws his future on the faint luck and risks to lose everything in an effort to predict the human need. This special hate word is describing anyone who is determined that if there is a need then it must be satisfied, and place his own money where his mouth is. The word is "Profiteering". Sometimes it is "speculation".
So, I believe that Mercury is right. Let them have it without profiteering.
For me, someone from USSR, to observe this happening is deja vue. Seeing people willfully huddling themselves like cattle, literally swimming in waste, for no reason whatsoever, at least no physical reason. To see a huge multitude of people, all living in a formerly proud place, suddenly deciding to take on an animal way of life - all by themselves. To see them decide that they shall now suffer the pitiful little effects of weather, as if they were mere rats. To see and hear them scream from this self-inflicted pain and yet keep on keeping on chanting their senseless proclamations, as if all of the advances of humanity never even happened to them.
There is only one way one can deal with this insanity. I, therefore, second Mercury in saying: "Let them have it". But, someone always throws at me, where's your mercy?
Mercy? I shall, and always do have mercy for the one who never knew the way, was never shown one. Not for someone who decided to cast the good principle away for no other reason that his hubris. Mercy would be misapplied in this case.
And today news brings even more hubris! Instead of raising gas prices to settle the demand and supply, they now introducing another scheme to outsmart fairness, - license plates? These idiots are begging for more.
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Posted by Rrust on 11/09/12 12:20 PM
"public service… is merely a euphemism for private enrichment"
That's a splendid eternal truth in a very small nut-shell. --One to be remembered. Thank you! From now on, whenever I hear the words "public service", I will think only of this. It also makes voting a simple matter. (--Too few exceptions to matter much.)
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Posted by Bosco Hurn on 11/09/12 12:18 PM
When they pulled this odd/even crap in the 70s we used to just swap plates.
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Posted by Tolstoyan on 11/09/12 11:40 AM
I think the government's experts are frauds as well. Case in point - NASA.
By the way, I am always skeptical of anything that allegedly comes from NASA, including whether the Mars Rover is even on Mars.
Came across tis video that indicates that maybe there is no rover on Mars.
Click to view link
Reply from The Daily Bell
We've discussed this as well ....
