The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

The revolution will not be televised because the revolution will not be visible to the naked eye. For all the bitching, the working class has it pretty sweet here compared to the third world. We've got social security and easy credit, so almost anyone can buy a car and a big screen TV (note I said "buy" not "own") and never feel the need to worry about saving for retirement. Not to shit on the poor. I've been there, and I know that I'm quite fortunate to have been given the ability, opportunity and encouragement to escape from that world. I do not envy the strain that comes from having to live in poverty without hope of ever making ends meet. So why don't they rise up?

The system knows that people who have nothing to lose are a threat to the status quo. That's why the Romans gave the poor bread and circuses and why the Romanovs, who didn't, met with a violent end. In modern America we offer the poor a social safety net which, however full of holes it is, offers a sense of security. We also offer lotteries and payday loans and rent-to-own stores to give them a sense of hope that they too can become rich or at least live like they are. Heck, we even let you buy eternal salvation on a credit card.

As long as the poor have these things and a nice looking man with a phony southern drawl on TV telling that they should go to Disney World and them he'll protect them, they will not want to risk it all to follow some hairy wild eyed revolutionary who promises them utopia.

Does this mean that everything will be hunky dory? Not by a long shot. Free money is not cheap. Someone's got to pay the price. For the Roman and British Empires this meant conquering other people, enslaving them and taking their resources. These days we are much more PC about it. When we conquer other people, we "liberate" them and "buy" their resources. Plus we don't slaughter nearly as many of them. Sadly, this kinder, gentler approach is more expensive and still hasn't made the natives any happier than they were when our predecessors tried it. And now they have remote controlled IEDs. Imagine what how much harder it would have been for Julius Caesar if the Gauls had a bunch of those.

Back home, no one is desperate enough to do the dirty work for low wages. So we import cheap labor to do it, but those people look around and see what a good deal even the poorest citizens are getting, and they want a piece of the pie too. We also export as many of these jobs as we can, but that means paying out a lot more money than we bring in. This works just fine so long as those foreigners keep lending the money we send them back to us.

In the end what will bring the system down is not a bloody revolution or an invasion, but plain old boring economics. The costs will simply become too much to bear, and the entitlements that the central government grants its citizens will dwindle. So too the money required to enforce the thousands upon thousands of laws will dry up. The people will need to worry less about taking up arms to topple the system and more about coming up with alternate means of providing for and defending themselves.

Lest anyone think that I'm hoping for a Mad Max sort of world (okay, maybe I am, but only for the XB Falcon Coupe), I actually think that if enough of us prepare for this eventuality, the transition from a centralized system to a decentralized community-based system will go rather smoothly. Just look around your neighborhood. The local police, fire department and schools are already funded mostly by local taxes. The only thing that communities will have to give up is federal and state aid and the strings that come with it.

Poorer communities that depend on federal subsidies will certainly suffer, but lets face it, the last 40 years of education and social programs hasn't made things much better for them, and since so much of the inner city and rural economy is informal, the loss of centralized banking and trading systems won't really affect them. Poor communities are in many ways far more self-sufficient than the wealthy suburbs. A familiarity with the concept of barter has its advantages. They certainly won't miss the devastating affects of the Drug War either.

The ones who will really be screwed are the paper pushers who couldn't build, grow or fix anything of real value if their lives depended on it. No matter what we'll still need food, shelter and transportation. And when we can no longer depend on others to provide these things for us, we need to be ready to provide for ourselves.