" A prudent and responsible parent will use his capital sparingly in order to pass on to his children as much as possible of his inheritance. A selfish and irresponsible parent will squander it in riotous living and care not one whit how his offspring will fare."
As with all commentary on this subject, and I do mean all, including our present time, there is one word missing, the word that defined humanity then, now, and for the future before calamitous collapse.
Rickover should have known, and every Substack writer should know, that the foundational word is: corporation. They are the ultimate form of ultrasocial predation, and they owned his time as much as they own ours. Governments cannot and do not regulate them, being the junior and comparatively impoverished accomplice to them.
Saving the article to read, but I just wanted to share that I knew who the thumbnail was instantly. As a former Navy nuke (and submariner) myself, Rickover's face is burned into my memory.
Thanks for sending the essay. It's really well-done, and brilliantly argued.
Of course I have had my own angle on the corporate agent of collapse, as you can tell by my comment, and have been writing about it for decades.
The book that has given me the most precise framing on the biological nature of corporations is John Gowdy's Ultrasocial. I saw that a commenter had also recommend Fabian Schiedler's the End of the Megamachine, which I also like, but both books are infected with a fatal case of hopium, arguing that humans can somehow magically re-speciate themselves away from corporate-organized self-extinction.
You write that "Corporations, in their profit-driven activities, often overlook or undermine ethical considerations," which is fine, but corporations, as Robert Jackall, a former professor of mine, showed way back in the 80s that corporations are fundamentally criminogenic operations, hierarchies based on lying and shifting of blame to subordinates or competitors both within and from outside the corporation.
As you say in piece, there are a million more ways corporations operate in the totalitarian conquest of all social space, and we are only scratching the surface, especially since there is a full-scale corporate putsch on in US electoral politics and abroad.
This seems to be the most important subject for understanding we will ever face - not that we can do a damn thing about it, but just knowing the truth about our world should count as compensation.
My favorite quote -
" A prudent and responsible parent will use his capital sparingly in order to pass on to his children as much as possible of his inheritance. A selfish and irresponsible parent will squander it in riotous living and care not one whit how his offspring will fare."
A favorite boomer generation bumper sticker -
"I'm spending my kids inheritance !"
Thanks mummy.
As with all commentary on this subject, and I do mean all, including our present time, there is one word missing, the word that defined humanity then, now, and for the future before calamitous collapse.
Rickover should have known, and every Substack writer should know, that the foundational word is: corporation. They are the ultimate form of ultrasocial predation, and they owned his time as much as they own ours. Governments cannot and do not regulate them, being the junior and comparatively impoverished accomplice to them.
Wow! He hit on every single issue we are now confronting.
Saving the article to read, but I just wanted to share that I knew who the thumbnail was instantly. As a former Navy nuke (and submariner) myself, Rickover's face is burned into my memory.
Thanks for sending the essay. It's really well-done, and brilliantly argued.
Of course I have had my own angle on the corporate agent of collapse, as you can tell by my comment, and have been writing about it for decades.
The book that has given me the most precise framing on the biological nature of corporations is John Gowdy's Ultrasocial. I saw that a commenter had also recommend Fabian Schiedler's the End of the Megamachine, which I also like, but both books are infected with a fatal case of hopium, arguing that humans can somehow magically re-speciate themselves away from corporate-organized self-extinction.
You write that "Corporations, in their profit-driven activities, often overlook or undermine ethical considerations," which is fine, but corporations, as Robert Jackall, a former professor of mine, showed way back in the 80s that corporations are fundamentally criminogenic operations, hierarchies based on lying and shifting of blame to subordinates or competitors both within and from outside the corporation.
As you say in piece, there are a million more ways corporations operate in the totalitarian conquest of all social space, and we are only scratching the surface, especially since there is a full-scale corporate putsch on in US electoral politics and abroad.
This seems to be the most important subject for understanding we will ever face - not that we can do a damn thing about it, but just knowing the truth about our world should count as compensation.