Welcome to the Favor Society

This is an awesome essay from Gary H. Johnson, Jr. that should give you a picture of the great American experiment developed by America’s Founding Fathers is slowly whittled away by Collectivist (neo-Marxist) values.

In the case of President Barack Hussein Obama’s mantra of “Change,” one should delve into the Marxist thoughts of the Italian Antonio Gramsci (see also HERE).

JRH 10/18/09
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Let’s simplify everything and go back to the basics...

As I see it, economics is a result of ethical movements and the natural pull of empowerment. The downward spiral starts with the populist drive to socialism's ethical values of altruism which is called progressivism, this push leads to a critical mass of interests which break out into an Entitlement Society, which is followed closely by a Favor Society in the Age of the Bully, which guarantees a Pirate Society, which reflexively forces a Police State, which yields either an expansionist Totalitarianism or an isolationist Totality of a state both of which are driven by supremacist identity ethics.

To break the events of the day down, take a look at this March Journal...

-GHJJ
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Welcome to the Favor Society

Observations of Gary H. Johnson, Jr.

The progression of a market based economy and political setup which values individual rights into a state based economy and any of its totalitarian political strains based on collective rights is a simple downward spiral, whose chief guiding force is ethical movement and a revaluation of values based on the principles of altruism.

First, a capitalist or market economy, such as the United States of America, has a set of values and laws based on individual rights and the value of individual life. This creates an economic and political state derived from incentive based and self-esteem driven creative production. The selfish earn and are rewarded. The greedy steal (life, innocence, property, value) and are punished for their crimes. The individual is protected from government excess and the evils of individuals or groups who choose to break laws and codes of value.

Then, this market economy's value set is attacked by a "social consciousness" and the value of individual life is replaced as the prime mover of an economy and laws with the value of collective life. The selfish still earn. The greedy still steal. However, at this re-valuation stage, the government forces the mixing of economics with bureaucracies which begin to reward greed and chastise selfishness. The protection of the individual from the government then shifts to the governmental securing of the property of the collective population. The ethics of individual rights, which are very much black and white, begin to gray with the new science of collective rights.

This revaluation period of societal norms gives way to one of two things...either a populist push or a self-interest backlash. The populist push is a manifestation of Collective Will while the self-interest backlash is a manifestation of Individual Reason. Since the original government was established to protect individual rights and a value set based on property rights and the self-esteem of the individuals within it, the self-interest backlash has power over populism in the founding documents, charters and documents. However, since the revaluation of values has placed the security of the collective population as the source of value, a new formulation of government purposes is manifested in the populist push toward revamping the laws of the founding documents based on the new graying morality of the reframed social consciousness.

The indicator of values and morality in government and economics is the tax structure. 50% is the dividing line between slavery and freedom; and thus, the political and economic spectrum of reality to the self-interest backlash is based on the indicator of wealth redistribution. The revaluation period is a multi-generational effort in the populist push. The revaluation period is an ever present NOW in the reasoned self-interest backlash. A push and pull develops in this revaluation period as the populist will seeks to tax at slave levels (50%-plus taxation) while the self-interest backlash seeks to retain its property and natural inalienable individual rights (at less than 50% taxation). At this point, earnings are treated as power markers, and Reasoned self-interest is demonized and equated as greed. The populist will then raises up heroes such as Robin Hoods to counter the villainy of the Robber Barons and propaganda derives the equation selfishness equals greed to blur the valuation of societal norms and behavior in the market. The Reasoned self-interested individuals at this point throw themselves upon the mercy of the founding documents and hold on to the original value set via courts and legislation as a matter of self-defense.

Interestingly, the populist push works on momentum and need and has the ability to reach critical mass through emotional pleading, while Reasoned Self-Interest works on creativity and scarcity and reached critical mass at the founding of the individual rights as the source of government as a contract with the individuals within it. For instance, in the United States, critical mass was reached at the writing of the US Constitution after having derived its momentum through the works of Adam Smith and Thomas Paine and the rallying calls of the Declaration of Independence and the Continental Revolution which sought to break the power of Crown Law founded in divine right and force the establishment of law based on the natural rights of individual men and women. The freedom of the press and the natural inclination of the empowered to devise means of peddling pull in the economic and political spheres through unionism along with the nature of education as an instrument of sway are seen by the populist push as vehicles for advancing agendas; while the Reasoned self-interest backlash see these vessels as means to maintain and conserve freedoms and values already chartered and honed. This fundamental juxtaposed disposition naturally gives weight and strength to the populist push of the organized collectives over the reasoned self-interest backlash of disorganized individuals.

When critical mass is reached in a populist push, governmentally, all previous advances in economics, invention, and individual rights become property of the people. Thomas Edison, for instance, didn't invent the lightbulb - America did. Ford didn't invent the automobile, America created assembly lines to manufacture vehicles. When critical mass is reached in a populist push, the individual innovators who, through entrepreneurship and risk, invented a widget or a developed an industry which created jobs and wages and markets and through ingenuity and sweat and management provided for educations and meals for untold families are framed as EVIL and GREEDY...while it is the Unions and Government who taxed and pirated and held hostage the innovating business owner who are held up as champions of Social Security. Social Security is the value set at this stage in the revaluation period. Individual Security is secondary to the Social Scientist, and need is the driving force of rights, not scarcity. It is at this point in critical mass in the populist push that the creation of an entitlement society begins to gather steam and the reasoned self-interest backlash is thrown to the courts and the separation of powers (if they exist) for protection from the onslaught of the changing cultural norms and revaluation of values.

When the entitlement society begins, punishment is the key driving force of power and pull. Social Consciousness, as a science, generates a victim mentality in those it seeks to empower. Once empowered, the victim lashes out at its perceived offenders. This is the law of Frederique Bastiat and it holds true for all manifestations of enfranchisement. It is not class warfare...it is values warfare. When the victim is empowered, the victim lashes out. The victim, in the case of the populist push to entitlement, is the huddled masses of poverty stricken broken lives, who have witnessed the greed of those who would doom them to a life of work and toil and self-responsibility. A societal schizophrenia takes place at this point, in which the values of the founding documents - individual rights, self-reliance, and earning a living are the very things which victimize the masses. This schizophrenia displays itself in populist political bromides and laws passed by conflicted parliaments who are determined to punish the offender of the day, namely...the Business Owner.

Who to blame? The victim looks to the wealthy, who created the jobs, who invented the machines, who thrived by damning the victims to a life of self reliance and earning a living. The media and educational spheres at this point join with the unions and formulate a complete revamp of societal values and call for the beheadings of those who have and force their sacrifice to the have not’s. Sacrifice is the key of an entitlement society. Whatsmore? Forced Sacrifice becomes a full-blown virtue in the eyes of the populist push, whose members were victimized by those who doomed them to a "materialistic" life of self-reliance and earning. Cultural, Racial, Religious, and Legal forces then unite in a populist mass upheaval and demand Change! And that change is always based on self-sacrifice for the common good. Whether it be in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia or Mussolini's Italy or Mao's Cultural Revolution.

The populist push, at critical mass, in all market economies, whether they be pure capitalism or mixed or purely mercantilist, that have fallen throughout time to the entitlement mentality have demanded collective rights by forcing the individual to sacrifice for the common good, and by stealing back its perceived lost wages through reparations, socialization, or nationalization. The call for change in economic upheaval or the cries of revolution in times of cultural reflexiveness always end in a state run economy and the enslavement of the citizens within it. Why? Because the Change that is sought is a change in values not resources. Scarcity trumps need in every case of a market economy, else the law of supply and demand would not be a law at all. Individual rights and property rights are derived from a reasoned assessment that scarcity exists...and the cries of revolution or the chants of reform or change from the street or the masses denies the reality that scarcity exists. To wish away or hope away scarcity does not change the fact that scarcity exists. And this fact is all that the backlash of reasoned self-interest has to cling to in the rising tide of mass insanity, since the courts and the legal stipulations at this point corral justice onto the rails of the social science of multiculturalism.

The thing that differentiates the entitlement society from the populist push is the fact that an entitlement society expects those who are sacrificing for the common good to be thankful for the opportunity of being forced to do the "right" thing. This is the stage when reason is broken and the revaluation of values instilled by the populist push for social consciousness is picked up by a new generation of self-interested thinkers after thirty or forty or sixty years of media, educational, and propagandist value re-shaping. Reason is a thing that is transmitted generationally. When the transmission of reason is interrupted over the course of two or three generations, a process which takes between thirty and sixty years, the definition of truth and justice and virtue, in short the valuation of things, can be completely reversed from that of the founding documents if the populist push is successful in its effort to revamp education and force anti-industrialization through a twisted fairness idealism that has nothing to do with reason and everything to do with hope and wish and whim. The result is the entitlement society...a society whose mentality and value set is undeniably, as a matter of nature and grace, Supremacist! At this point, all is gray as far as values and morality...and to declare anything black and white is defined as extremism by the Supremacists feeding at the trough of sacrifice.

The entitlement society is the actualization of a welfare state and the actualization of the punishment of individualism and merit based production at the behest of an ever expanding panoply of interest groups, who seek reparations for the offenses mounted upon their congregations. The critical mass of the populist push gives birth to a natural reality - that reality is the Organized Pull Peddlers. Taxes, by their nature are levied individually on a punitive scale; however, beneficiaries are necessarily concentrated in committees. The birth of the NGO world is proof of this reality in the modern United States and in the United Nations and in the European Union. At this point, the government is not of the people, by the people and for the people.

Rather, the government is of the committees, by the committees and for the committees. The individual is nothing, the Directorships are all. The boards of industry, the boards of unions, the boards of interest groups, the boards of advocate agencies, the boards of government diplomacy, the boards of media, the boards of education - all law is, in the entitlement society, formed through Rule by Committee. Individuals are now subject to the Rules of Committee and the disenfranchisement of individual rights is in full form. Non Governmental Organizations, one-issue agencies and fringe elements become funnels for lobbyists of all shape and color and purpose - all pleading their victimization in the new spectrum of valuation. Government Policy, Budget, Welfare, Diplomacy and business stimulation is now relegated to Rule by Committee. The entitlement society, by the weight of the broad tax base and the nature of concentrated beneficiaries guarantee the collectivization of interest in committee. And all of this occurs, under the umbrella of a new, burgeoning definition of values designed by the victim mentality of punishment. In short, the Directorship is the gateway drug of the Dictatorship. It is in this entitlement society that the justice of reason gives way fully as a matter of ethics to the justifications of punitive welfarist rationalizations. Taxes surpass 50% and the country cheers their new found chains and declares its slavery to be the true definition of brotherhood.

When power is wielded by committee for the purpose of welfare on behalf of the victim in pursuit of punishment, creation and competition yield to the nature of usurpation and combat due to the reality of the ethical impulse spelled out in the populist revaluation of values: self-sacrifice for the common good. At this point, the re-definition of reality is ordained by the Will of the Entitled. The Selfish are Greedy. The Selfless are Virtuous. This is the new formulation of the entitlement society based on the unreason of need-based economic and social science, whose definition of justice has nothing to do with earning or theft and everything to do with multiculturalism and social recourse. The backlash of the reasoned self-interest, at this point create two creatures: The Compromising and the Uncompromising. And strangely, these creatures are swimming with the new breed of reasoning beings who base their reasoned assessment of reality on the values of the entitlement society. Invention and merit are found in all three groups; however, the compromising are willing to play ball with the new breed of backwards thinkers...and the uncompromising are isolated into a new class - the outcast, the outsider, the rogue. From these Committee based welfarists and collectivized populists chanting for justice via theft, who seek to destroy the self-esteem and interests of the compromising, of the neo-reasoned individuals, and of the outcasts, a new dawn is born when the crunch of world-economic realities force a new political makeup devised of a majority of entitlement seekers. The new dawn - the change, the revolution of the populists - yields the Favor Society.

The Favor Society is the establishment, as a matter of law, the Age of the Bully. The Favor Society is the complete annihilation of Reason. Business, government, and all creative capacity is subjected to the spectacle of Corruption by Committee as standard operating procedure... The death of reason, the death of the American dream, the death of capitalism occur in this outpouring of the entitlement society. The supremacist nature of entitlement mentality is the driving force of the Favor Society. The individual, in order to succeed, must submit to the wiles and whims of committees and boards and groups which have nothing whatsoever to do with creation. The Favor Society, the Age of the Bully, is the bureaucratization of Creativity and the forced submission of the market to full sail Committee Regulation. All ideas are denuded of individualism and given a collective angle. Advertisements, educational modes, news media, all, are subjected to a funding and fulfillment mechanism by Committee. In order to accomplish anything, the board must vote, the board must bastardize, and the board must soften, and the board must generate an amalgum of the original idea into a committee creation, in a method which strips all incentive for new ideas and at the same time angles to punish the originator of every idea should the resultant committee bastardization not work effectively. Survival is the mode of the day, mode of production, and driving purpose of the Favor Society. Prosperity is a word reserved for Societal success and Risk is weighed as a crime against humanity.

This shift in perspective on production and creation completely destroys incentive based invention and at the same time forces complete acceptance of Committee Chairs to don the Favor cloak. The Directorship, the chairmanship, the board membership is the source of empowerment and mob rule, and mafia corruption as a new stage of law. Monopoly by law via nationalization and socialization of industry perpetuates failure and guarantees zero advancement in industry since R&D is seen as a risky endeavor. Taxation is levied at 60% across the board since the wealthy have already been taxed into opprobrium and destroyed for having ever led business or had the gall of thinking his merit had anything to do with his reasoning mind. Cowardice of an enslaved people guarantee the acceptance of the taxation measures.

In the Favor Society self-esteem is replaced with identity based supremacism in very short order as a psychological collectivization takes hold of the suddenly realized slaves. As the vice closes, revolt is a natural progression for those outsiders and rogues, who seek to find a way out of the slaver trap... This natural inclination, however, is trumped by the crackdown on weaponry and the right to bear arms, which was set into precedent by law back in the dawn of the entitlement age as a matter of brotherhood's completion and idealism that naturally flows from the bromides of the politicians who seek an enlightened age when we can come together without worrying over the force of arms. The matter is left to the courts to close out the right to bear arms, and in the Favor Society, the Judges are on the payroll of Committees which guarantee the eradication of defensive measure of individuals who may seek to disrupt the momentum of a heavier and heavier tax burden. This juiced in Judiciary guarantees the rise of the Age of the Bully amid the Favor Society. The Committee heads at this point develop militias/gangs/mafias to overcome the laws they feel are unjust, since the Rule By Committee is slowly but surely being replaced by an Authoritarian Dictatorship...and an underground black market is formed to meet the needs of those which are disowned by the government. The corruption grows so fast that the Police and the Sheriffs quickly enter the payrolls of the underground Committee Chairs...welcome to the Pirate Society.

The Pirate Society is the natural progression of a Favor Society, since the most independent minded men and women of reason are forced into an outsider position and resort to, at the end of the day in the Favor Society, succumbing to the pressures of survival and taking on secondary sources of monetary income by bridging the underground world with the Committee Heads via smoky back rooms and suddenly criminalized enterprise. The unmentionables of sunday school life are brought to the table in the underground - drugs, guns, liquor, prostitution, gambling, cigarettes and every single thing the Favor and Entitlement society forced into a monopoly via the government, which was pushed into the smugglers underground as an answer to the moral and economic crises of the day. The corrupting force of policing these red light enterprises create an entirely untaxed undercurrent in the society, and the committee heads bicker over the level of funds lost by the economy to the underground, which they sought to defeat by eliminating competition in the first place.

At this point the pirate society government embarks on a clean up campaign, raises taxes to 70%, builds a pre-set precedent of martial law and citizen task forces, raises awareness of public administrator corruption, public policing corruption, and other intergovernmental committee corrupting forces, and demonizes the outlaws who are isolated as mafias and lambasted for their corrupting influence on society. A snitch campaign begins, at this point, in which the new morality police ask children and neighbors to turn in their parents and friends who are associated with this underground world. Fear rules the day and punishment is administered anew, and the military is mobilized within society to garner complete eradication of the vice in order to promote the virtues of the state led enterprises which developed the underground by committee in the first place. The paid off judges, at this point, in the employ of the various committees and with zero resolve to uphold the original founding documents, issue conflicting judgments on multiple levels and the breakdown to anarchy begins as blind arrests, collective punishments, targeted raids, and vendetta are thrown to the courts for resolution.

It is from this paid off judiciary that the Police State and one party rule gain momentum towards the complete Totalitarian Dictatorship. Law and Order are the promise of this Reflexive consortium of militia mafia underground leaders - and it is from the underground that the one party rulers rise. The Police State is Reigned in by the Heads of the Committees and Mafia Dons and Juiced in Military officials who have full access to all knowledge of the goings on of the underground economy, since smuggling and illicit activities are far more profitable on an hourly and sweat equity basis than government forced labor. The Police State is Gang Rule, not Government Rule...the government is a side player at this point, because "Law and Order" can only be given by the strong, independent outsiders, who rose through the ranks by compromising every value of reasoned justice in the book to be powerful enough in terms of the favor society to gain democratic votes. Take this state of things, throw in massive runaway inflation due to poor governmental management and lack of citizen incentive, add in a touch of "Entitlement Society" supremacist zeal and you have a Hitler...who sicks his posse and goon squads on their victim/supremacist/identity based definition of the boogey man somehow keeping the society in the pits.

The only thing left to decide is whether this Powerful Ruler who rises from the gutter into the position of enlightened leader and symbol of moral truth is whether the dictatorship will assume an expansionist or an isolationist path.

The sad part of this natural push and pull of ethical impulses and movements is the fact that reason is murdered along the way in the society as a whole. Why? Because "Change!" was the cry of the day...and no one realized that the change sought in economics and leadership and politics would be realized only in the realm of values or that the enslavement of society and the murder of reason would be the eventual result."