Who Were the Sea Peoples?

Something like "marriage equality" isn't really about "marriage equality," which is really just an empty slogan: who is actually in favor of all potential marriages being treated "equally"? In reality it is a weapon in the battle between the old elite of the ancien régime and the new elite of a highly educated bureaucracy. Traditional morality and traditional religions are aligned with the old elite, so the rising elite tries to blast them out of its path to power. What people like Paul Krugman are working for is not an egalitarian society, as that's impossible : "The conservative position has never been simply that a hierarchical society is better than an egalitarian one. It’s that an egalitarian society is impossible. Every society includes rulers and ruled. The central question of politics, therefore, is not whether some will command while others obey. It’s who gives the orders." What they are fighting for is a society in whic...

"You are right, the idyll of peace and virtue of which our philosophers sing is about as real as a fable. But look what lies hidden behind these words, and you will see that an oligarchy is arising, ready to defeat and replace the one in power. The victory of the new oligarchy is certain because energy and strength are on its side." -- Vilfredo Pareto, The Rise and Fall of Elites , pp. 38-39 Reading Pareto just give me a whole new perspective on the libertarian "movement." Of course a world of entirely voluntary interactions is a pure fable. That many people like believe this fable is understandable: what really needs explaining is the large amount of funding behind it. But looking at all the talk of a world of peaceful cooperation as a smokescreen for the rise of a new oligarchy makes it comprehensible. "I am fighting for a world without coercion" is going to motivate many more people than is "I am fighting for a world in which the Koch brother...

Vilfredo Pareto , after being a reformer interested in abolishing privilege for some time, finally realized that efforts at abolishing privilege never seemed to actually do so: they merely ensconced the leadership of that movement to abolish privilege themselves in positions of privilege. He called this "the circulation of the elites." So let's say, as some friends of this blog wish, we successfully campaigned to eliminate "white privilege." (I put this in scare quotes because I think what we really have today is "people who act like upper-class whites privilege": the daughter of Chinese immigrants who goes to Yale and then Wharton is a lot more privileged than the white, single mother of three living in a trailer park in Appalachia: the Chinese woman has learned to behave like the "white" upper class, which once was indeed all white, but today will admit anyone who adopts their values and customs.) The result would not be an abolition of ...