Constants and Variables 150, flat edition
Still pondering the BIG variable.

Sweden and Belarus and Japan and Korea avoided lockdowns and stuck with REAL SCIENCE.

Everyone else committed genocide.

I've considered ethnicity, but it doesn't work. Belarus and Sweden are Euro. Korea and Japan and China are ethnically similar, and share a lot of cultural history. China was the SOURCE of the lockdown. Fail.

Personality of the leader is undoubtedly part of the picture. Fighting the rest of the world takes MASSIVE courage. But the apparent power of the four leaders is quite distinct. Lukashenko has been in power since before the Sorosian breakup. The current presidents of Japan and Korea have been in office for a couple years, with fragile majorities in parliament. Lofven is fairly new.

Here's one simple word that fits all four, but still doesn't work well as an overall explainer.

Fordism.

All four have relatively FLAT economic profiles, and all four have RESPECT FOR SKILLS.

All four are Tanh instead of Exp. They have a CEILING for economic distance between rich and poor. Other countries assume riches and power must be Exp, rising vertically to infinity.

Employers provide full-scale benefits, deserving lifetime loyalty and receiving lifetime loyalty.

Fordism respects and honors and trains the real skills needed for real work. Goldman and Bezos HATE real workers, viewing human employees as NEGATIVE EXTERNALITIES that must be ruthlessly cut down. Business must consist of PURE ABSTRACT NUMBERS and INFINITE SHARE VALUE.

Sweden has been Tanh for a long time. Belarus is a time capsule for Soviet economic practices. Korea and Japan picked up literal Fordism from MacArthur and ran with it, while we abandoned it.

All four are relatively you-first instead of me-first. This is the BIG difference from China.

How would this variable create the specific result? Natural Law. The energies of psychopaths are CONSTRAINED to serve employees, instead of running feral toward infinite expansion and infinite murder.

= = = = =

Now stretch the analogy to the breaking point as usual. Why was FDR able to take over USA and solve all of our problems? Why was he able to prosecute and limit the bankers? Because we were already halfway there. From NCR to Conoco to Elgin to Ford, flat economics and beneficial employment were widespread by 1920. Harding was able to pull back Wilson's Deepstate because he was firmly Fordist, and because major centers of economic power were also Fordist. He didn't have to fight them all. Coolidge allowed the NYC oligarchs to regrow, doing their usual evil. Stealing everything and killing everyone. After the mass murder in 1932, Fordism still had power in some industries and unions, so FDR didn't have to fight them all.

Dubious but worth thinking about.

Labels: Equipoise, Natural law = Soviet law, skill-estate

  ¶ 7:11 AM