Grey Swans Are Circling

The lifestyle of a stable New Gilded Age is out of stock.

History is either "one damned thing after another"--a chaotic collection of random events--or there are connections between events that are not readily visible. The study of history includes both rooting around for more factual evidence to aid our understanding, and interpreting what is known--both the factual evidence and what people living at that time described and thought was happening.

Two recent events invite interpretation: the sudden collapse of Syria's regime and the assassination of an American CEO in America's financial capital. These can be viewed as unique one-off events of little future import or they can be viewed as watershed events, harbingers of a future far different than the present.

A systemic case can be made that the grey swans circling above us are harbingers of transformative change. What is a grey swan? A grey swan is an event that is known and possible to happen, but which is assumed to be unlikely to occur. The term derives from Nassim Taleb's black swan theory, which describes an event that is unlikely but unknown.

The explanation machine is already spewing out reams of reasons why Syria's dynasty collapsed practically overnight after enduring for decades in a tumultuous region riven by war and conflict. What's strikingly difficult to explain neatly and coherently is how everything is forever until it is no more. Are there causal factors that are common to all such sudden collapses of regimes that appeared to be if not forever, then demonstrably durable?

This raises interesting questions. If we identify the causal factors of sudden collapse, are they discernable in other nations that appear stable at the moment? Could some of these factors act like viruses, and spread to neighboring countries, or via the Internet, to distant lands that share similar profiles? Could such a collapse act as a domino falling, providing the impetus to other fragile states collapsing?

Equally interesting is the mass of propaganda being spewed to cover up the systemic vulnerabilities that might have played a role in the Syrian regime's collapse. The tsunami of propaganda is intended to bolster the everything is forever narrative, but the enormity and virulence of the propaganda effort suggests the opposite: extreme vulnerability and fear of other regimes that they could be next.

Discussions of what triggered the Western Roman Empire's collapse shed some light on the ease of embracing an interpretation that misses the mark. Gibbon concluded that Christianity undermined Rome's coherence; others view Christianity as the alternative structure that enabled Europe to maintain critical coherence in the centuries after Western Rome fell. (The Eastern Roman Empire--the Byzantine Empire--had a different set of circumstances and endured in truncated form for almost a thousand years after Rome fell.)

Moral and social decay are often listed as causal factors, but dismissed by those who see the increasingly capable Barbarian armies as the cause of Rome's collapse. Others have widened the narrative from war and internal decay to climate change and the ravages of pandemics.

The relevance of all these factors leads to a diagnosis of polycrisis--the collapse cannot be attributed to any one factor but to the confluence of many factors, each of which undermined the status quo's moral, financial and material bases which fatally destabilized the coherence of the regime's military and political responses.

From the perspective of polycrisis, the collapse of Syria's regime could be a harbinger of future collapses, not a one-off event. The reason for this is that many of the keystone/linchpin elements of polycrisis are visibly global in nature: they affect every region and nation-state, regardless of size or location.

Sudden collapses of key regimes tend to unleash forces that destabilize other regimes, or act as triggers for regimes to take actions which are initially viewed as protective which end up imploding the regime from within.

Humans like to think we're in charge, but forces such as extreme weather and demographic decline are not controllable in the same way as declarations of war, which tend to exacerbate whatever problem the war was intended to solve.

History is definitive in one regard: there are discernable eras of widespread turmoil, conflict, demographic decline, destabilization and the collapse of the status quo. The Warring States era in China comes to mind, as do the 1600s in Europe.

Only time will tell if Syria's regime collapse is the first inning of a long game of global destabilization, or if it is a one-off event with limited knock-on consequences. If we line up the systemic elements of polycrisis that are already evident globally, the argument that it will all blow over with minimal long-term impact seems unpersuasive.

The assassination of an American healthcare CEO illuminates many of America's taboos, realities that cannot be openly stated without immediate vitriol from defenders of the status quo. One such taboo is to state the obvious: an economy-society that defines prosperity by the metrics of corporate profits and a rising stock market rather than the well-being of its citizenry is an economy-society begging for overthrow.

Matt Stoller's essay on this event provides much-needed historical context for domestic violence against the status quo: An Assassin Showed Just How Angry America Really Is. Stoller excerpted quotes from American leaders in the previous era of domestic violence against America's status quo (1886-1920) that reveal their clear understanding that unrestrained corporate power wielded by monopolies and cartels were as oppressive as Communism, though obviously by different means.

To state that extreme asymmetries of wealth and power will eventually incite social disorder on a mass scale is also taboo. When I state this openly, for example, Fix This or Nothing Else Matters (12/3/24) and The Seeds of Social Revolution: Extreme Wealth Inequality (11/15/24) I immediately get vitriolic pushback.

I'm angrily accused of being a Marxist (an accusation equally broad-brush and meaningless as being accused of being a Nazi), and heaped with abuse for thinking that "soaking the rich" is a solution to what is clearly the Invisible Hand of the Free Market doing its magic, making everything better every day, in every way, even as the "prosperity" and the well-being of the bottom 90% of the citizenry are in slow-motion disarray.

To say that the job of every CEO in America is not to provide a quality product or service for the good of the citizenry but to boost the corporation's profits and stock valuation is also taboo. That this is so obviously true is what makes it taboo.

It's also taboo to state that America's corporations have profited immensely from sickening the citizenry to the point that 75% of the populace is at risk of metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes. This was not the case 50 years ago. Something changed, and immense profits have been reaped not by improving the public's health but in sickening them and then alleviating the symptoms of these lifestyle diseases.

Three-Quarters of U.S. Adults Are Now Overweight or Obese: A sweeping new paper reveals the dramatic rise of obesity rates nationwide since 1990.

It's equally taboo to state that America's healthcare system isn't actually about healthcare, it's about profits. Please read this account of the amazing healthcare America offers its homeless populace, all without regard to profit, of course:

The Invisible Man: We see right through the unshowered soul living in a car by the beach, or by the Walmart, or by the side of the road. But he's there, and he used to be somebody. He still is. A firsthand account of homelessness in America.

If America has the "best healthcare in the world" available to all, then by all means back up your certitude by switching places with this fellow.

Recall the response of the Monsanto representative when challenged to drink Round-Up since it was so safe. ("F-U!") The well-paid apologists for the status quo know how to lie glibly and attack those who break the taboos, but they never back up their claims with their own personal lifestyle. It's called hypocrisy and moral rot. What Happened to Integrity and Honor? (12/6/24)

When we speak of the present as the New Gilded Age, perhaps we should review the social history of the prior Gilded Age: decades of disorder and violence from the Haymarket bombing in 1886 to the bombing of Wall Street in 1920, with everything from strikes being suppressed with machine guns, shootings of industrial titans and politicians and mail-bombs in between.

That's 34 years of social disorder. But never mind, everything will be fine as long as we avoid saying what's taboo out loud.

The lifestyle of a stable New Gilded Age is out of stock. Maybe history is nothing but random events without any common causal foundations, but to wager that The New Gilded Age is forever may not be a safe bet.

New podcast: Seeking a Culture of Honor and Integrity with Emerson Fersch and Amy LeNoble (59 min)