Todd McCloud:
The thing about an Oligarchy is it doesn't need to have any power in terms of more say in a government to be effective. It draws its power from groupthink.
Interesting analysis. Reminds me of the theory of 'Spontaneous Order'.
Essentially, Spontaneous Order is the phenomenon illustrated by a roller skating rink. If you put 100 people on roller skates in a skating rink and let them do what they want to do, eventually they will all be going in circles in the same direction. This is what happens when you have any group of people in a 'closed' environment.
ol·i·gar·chy - noun, plural ol·i·gar·chies.
1. a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few.
2. a state or organization so ruled.
3. the persons or class so ruling.
One of the items that is not on the list of definitions is oligarchies, per se, have 'limited access' as to who is in the ranks based upon a collective attitude pertaining to the requirements for membership in the oligarchy.
Taken to an extreme, you get this (according to George Orwell):
Again, spontaneous order that always occurs in which the many are governed by the few. This happens no matter what the system is mainly because the majority of people are either unwilling to participate and those that do must pass a 'gate keeping' process controlled by a ruling oligarchy.
The irony is, that no matter how plebian or democratic a system is, only about a marginal 10% participate at any given time no matter how you try to cut the cards. People have tried to change that but the imposed changes seem to conflict with human nature. And since human nature is not a variable, the proponents of any given system (oligarchical or democratic) see human nature as the defect and not their ideological systems as the real defect.
When oligarchies get dangerous (and they often do so without any intent or knowledge that they are doing so) you get the "War is Peace, Freedom is Slaver, Ignorance is Truth' effect.
War is Peace - conflict is good for promoting internal stability. It's the old 'common enemy' practice. You pick a common enemy (and individual or class of individuals) to focus upon and spontaneous order will follow in that direction. Bread and circuses.
Freedom is Slavery - convincing people that they are better off with other people doing the thinking for them so they are 'free' to not worry or make decisions as long as they comply and if they don't, they are dissuaded from non-compliance for fear of being relegated to the 'common enemy' class and duly targeted as such.
Ignorance is Truth - Ignorance doesn't imply stupidity. Ignorance is a state in which people 'ignore' the obvious and choose not to deal with it. The truth is that for the most part, if you don't think about something that is bad, and it doesn't really affect you or cause you harm, and it benefits you to be 'ignorant', then ignoring the obvious is beneficial and falling in line with the 'party' is even more beneficial. The problem is that (as Ayn Rand put it)
"You can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” But as long as those consequences are tolerable, 90% of the people will ignore reality and follow the old dictum that
"I refute your reality and therefore in its place I substitute my own."
The truth is, that no matter what system you create, impose or find yourself in, there will always be an oligarchy running it. It doesn't matter if its a dictatorship or a pure democracy. What matters is what the 'masses' perceive as 'reality'. You can be just as free in a total dictatorship as you can in a pure democracy, but that is all depending upon where in the pyramid you happen to be. In any system, bucking the system and moving from one class to another is discouraged if the system is truly oligarchical by nature.
Another irony is (a little economic dictum of my own creation) that
no matter what system of economics you seek to impose the forces of the 'free marked' will always prevail in the end. This is true in political systems.
Put in the context of The North Pacific, we have always done best when fending off or removing a usuper, rogue or invader or when people get lethargic and nothing dramatic is ocuring. And, ironically, when apathy and inactivity assert their inherent stability and status quo, that's when the rouges, usurpers and invaders tend to try to barge in and widdle in the soup. Every system tends to walk a line between total order and total chaos and that line is more or less wide according to how tolerant a given population is of various species of shenanigans.
One of the problems, or rather best points of TNP is that we are a highly tolerant lot of gits who, despite our inherent paranoia, tend to be a trusting and experimental lot of gits. This collection of people, like minded even though (at the same time) poles apart in opinion in the extreme at times is the result of the spontaneous order that makes The North Pacific exactly what it is. And our innate understanding of this is why we are all in The North Pacific.
Think about it.
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