The End of the Social Contract & The Rise of The Post-National Elites

The Italian philosopher and polymath—Vilfredo Pareto—and his circulation of elites theory goes a long way to explaining the bizarre, confusing, and even terrifying behavior of modern Western Elites. Fundamentally, Pareto identified two types of ruling elites—the Fox (Class I Residue) and the Lion (Class II Residue). The fox maximally deploys cunning, manipulation, trickery, and weaponized novelty to enrich themself. The Lion, in contrast, represents the Old Gods—physical force, tradition, the nation, religion, and legacy.

A healthy, well-functioning ruling class will contain a balanced mix of both—a sick and decaying elite, in contrast, will be dominated by a single type. In the case of an elite ruling class that is dominated by the Lion, expect zealous, ill-advised warfare and a constant dose of violence, coercion, and fear. With an elite dominated by the Foxes—expect confusion, financialization schemes, social and financial crises, and entropic decay—from amidst the fog of this entropic decay it is possible to extract and concentrate the vast amounts of wealth contained within their decaying kingdoms. The post-national ruling Elites of the West, I would propose, are unbalanced in favor of the Foxes, and thus, nothing much these days seems to make much sense.

SOURCES:

Angus Maddison, The World Economy, OECD Publishing,
(https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~aldous/157/Papers/world_economy.pdf)

Federal Reserves, Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. since 1989, (https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart

World Bank, FDI net inflows (BOP) - current USD, (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX.KLT.DINV.CD.WD)

World Bank, World Integrated Trade Solution (WITS), (https://wits.worldbank.org/)

World Bank, Manufacturing Value Added (current USD), (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.CD)

St. Louis FRED, US Employment in Manufacturing, (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP)

Our World in Data, CO2 Emissions, (https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions)

IEA, Clean Energy Supply Chain Vulnerabilities, 2023.

Eurostat, Unemployment by sex and age - monthly data, DOI: 10.2908/une_rt_m, (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/une_rt_m__custom_17367210/default/table?lang=en)

Eurostat,Asylum applicants by type, citizenship, age and sex - annual aggregated data,
[DOI: 10.2908/migr_asyappctza] (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/migr_asyappctza/default/table)

IMAGES:

Comedy and Tragedy Masks w/o Background. The Anome. Wiki Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0. (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Comedy_and_tragedy_masks_without_background.svg) - MODIFIED TO INCLUDE DOLLAR BILLS