What a great post VT! I love it. The Glazyev idea makes sense to me. There are certain technologies that exceed the ability of the individual to control or use properly.
GPS is one example. It’s fantastic if you want to drive in a new, disorienting city. Boston for example. But it was a disaster for fisheries where prior to GPS boat captains would have to dead-reckon out for any number of hours to the fishing grounds and start fishing again somewhere in the vicinity of where they were last week.
After GPS they could start 1 foot to the left of where they last were leaving no place for fishing grounds to be unmolested and recoverable. Couple GPS with fish finders and the next thing you know the fisheries collapsed and could only be recovered with really tight management coming from above.
The individuals were unable to manage the impacts of the technology at their level. Individual maximization of returns drove the show, no differently than letting a 12 year-old work TikTok to their own individual satisfaction.
But I’m also not a fan of leaving said regulation in the hands of the average goobermint bureaucrat. I’d prefer we had a very serious and truly diverse range of talents on the job, ratings from techies to philosophers, with a reasonable helping of wise old grandmothers to keep it real.
The American Dream is not dying, it is dead. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are concepts as stale as that 11-year-old burger in the Icelandic museum.
All you have to do is look around, and you can see the lack of vitality and dynamism. Who is proposing that we gather and build something as beautiful as Grand Central Station for the public good? Nobody, it would fall on completely deaf ears.
Where are the spirited debates as to whether we’d rather have all of our unchecked military adventurism vs. great food and a high-speed rail system? Nowhere. I doubt Congress could muster the courage even to dare to imagine what the debate parameters might be, let alone truly Grok them.
In reading Will Durrant’s books on history, as well as the Bible, I am as close to 100% confident as I can be that our current trajectory is going to have to play itself all the way out.
Hubris, pride, greed, gluttony, lust, envy, wrath and sloth.
These are the defining traits of every post-apogee regime.
This is why finding our tribe, committing to the hard work of being part of The Remnant, who will help to preserve the best through the darkness, and pitching in to rebuild is so important.
I have no idea if my local efforts will be used by me, my kids, or people I’ll never meet. But that’s unimportant. What’s important is doing the right things anyway.
ALL of it. 
%
Having the strength of one’s convictions, staying the course no matter what. Courage is fear walking.
