Wednesday, February 08, 2012

“Purposeful Obfuscation Via Complexity”

Charles Hugh Smith has penned an interesting essay for Business Insider titled This Is How Once-Great Empires End, with the following as its introductory statement.

The nation’s ills cannot be fixed by thousands of pages of regulation or more policy tweaks. Only a profound cultural transformation can address our problems. (bold by ed.)

Further into Smith’s essay, he buttresses that introductory statement with the following observations.

The entire financial and political infrastructure is corrupt. Perhaps it is time to note that the most thoroughly, venally, pervasively corrupt nations on Earth all have abundant regulations against corruption.  Regulations don’t stop or limit corruption, fraud and embezzlement by magic. Sickcare is beyond being “fixed” by thousands of pages of policy tweaks, limitations and regulations. The financial system is beyond being “fixed” by thousands of pages of arcane regulations that only serve to obfuscate the looting and predation while enshrining another vast Federal fiefdom that harvests the national income while accomplishing nothing of substance.

Regulation only functions if the culture and the society have a value system and a will to enforce it. The American people have lost those values and the will. Complicity reigns supreme. Instead we support going through the motions of adding layers of bureaucratic bloat, and listening to Soaring Rhetoric (TM) from bloviated politicos who promise us “prosperity,” “recovery” and all the rest without any sacrifice or engagement.

As Smith points out, and this also explains the title to this post, America is suffering from “purposeful obfuscation via complexity,” but, will it actually take a “profound” cultural transformation to overcome this purposeful obfuscation, or simply a resurgance of more traditional values, without the implementation of old timey persecution?

Link to Smith piece via Claire Wolfe.

Posted by John Venlet on 02/08 at 10:08 AM
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