Ryan Murphy, an economist at Southern Methodist University, recently published a working paper in which he ranked each of the states by the predominance of—there’s no nice way to put it—psychopaths. The winner? Washington in a walk. In fact, the capital scored higher on Murphy’s scale than the next two runners-up combined.
“I had previously written on politicians and psychopathy, but I had no expectation D.C. would stand out as much as it does,” Murphy wrote in an email…
On a national level, it raises the troubling question as to what it means to live in a country whose institutions are set up to reward some very dubious human traits. Like it or not, we’re more likely than not to wind up with some alarming personalities in positions of power.
– From last year’s Politico article, Washington, D.C.: the Psychopath Capital of America
One of the most frustrating aspects of modern American politics — and the culture in general — is our all encompassing fixation on the superficial. It’s also one of the main reasons I have very little interest in presidential politics, which basically consists of a bunch of billionaire friendly puppets auditioning to become the next public face of imperial oligarchy. Though I understand the desire for quick fixes, our focus on highlighting and mitigating only the symptoms of societal decay as opposed to the root causes, ensures we’ll never achieve the sort of positive paradigm-level shift necessary to bring humankind forward.
The truth of the matter is incentives rule the world, and if we look at some of the most pernicious and predatory areas of our socio-economic reality, including (but not limited to) the financial sector, the defense industry, intelligence agencies and healthcare, we find a slew of incentives that handsomely reward sociopathic behavior, while penalizing ethical, conscious action beneficial to society at large. Notice it’s always the whistleblowers who end up imprisoned or hunted down.
In the economic realm, if we think about the idea of a competitive free market, the primary reason the profit incentive exists and is widely accepted is the implicit understanding that people should be incentivized to create a product or service that benefits the public at large. While we still have remnants of this at play within the modern U.S. economy, much of the “wealth” attained these days is a direct consequence of rent-seeking, parasitic behavior and corruption of one kind or another. The reason is pretty simple. It’s incentivized.
When you have a financial fraud crime spree like the one witnessed earlier this century and your response is to bail out the criminals and ensure no executives go to jail, it’s essentially a gigantic bell ringing in the ears of every scoundrel on the planet. It’s open season on the general public for sociopaths. The Obamas weren’t super wealthy when Barack became President, yet they’re now worth an estimated $40 million (likely more given the size of their real estate purchases). The same thing happened to the Clintons. They’ve reportedly earned $240 million since Lolita express frequent flier Bill left office.
The most surefire way to succeed in America today is to be a high-functioning sociopath who scratches the backs of other high-functioning sociopaths. As such, the most pressing problem at a root level is that our economy and society incentivizes sociopathic behavior by systematically funneling sociopaths into positions of unaccountable power. If this sounds insane it’s because it is. The very structure of how our society functions is in fact insane.
These are the people running the show. They infect every country, every industry, every government. All the halls of power. Until we figure out a way to marginalize humanity’s sociopaths rather than hand them the reins of power globally, we’ll continue to repeat the current pointless, destructive cycle.
Yes, the recurrent problem is a very small percentage of sociopaths in society always get into power.
For a better future, we need to create systems that are specifically built to be resistant to this sort of takeover. https://t.co/9VS3jVkJFo
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) September 11, 2019
I’m certain the current mainstream political discussion in the U.S. isn’t serious because so few people are focused on the structure of society itself. There’s very little focus on incentives, on the fact that our entire economy functions as a promotion mechanism for sociopaths. No amount of tinkering around the edges is going to dramatically transform the human experience into something more positive until we figure out a way to make society itself resistant to sociopath takeover.
Significantly, one of the most in your face examples of sociopath dominance relates to imperial military policy, which has nothing to do with national defense and everything to do with national offense. It’s simply about utilizing state murder to advance power and profit for a few. The incentives are completely backwards, which is why it never gets better.
There are few things a human being can do more evil and depraved than lying a nation into war, yet that’s precisely what the proponents of the Iraq war did. More significantly, what consequences have befallen the proponents of that war? Increased fame and fortune in most cases. In fact, one of them is currently the leading contender for the Democratic Party nomination for President.
When you incentivize murderous behavior, you get more of it. Those who stand to benefit most from war should also have the most to lose, but our current system functions in the exact opposite way.
If every country in the world did this, large scale wars might disappear entirely. https://t.co/zdcJ8EEBIs
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) September 16, 2019
All that said, perhaps the most concerning instance of perverse incentives in society today can be found in the relationship between the national security state and average citizens. The way it works, and it’s rapidly getting worse, is you the individual have zero right to privacy while the national security state can classify what the CIA director ate for lunch. Those with the most power are subject to the least transparency, while the powerless masses are subject to mass surveillance. This unaccountable, authoritarian structure will continue to ensure the worst people alive end up in the highest echelons of power. What self-respecting sociopath wouldn’t be attracted to a system where you get to exercise total dominance over hundreds of millions of people with zero accountability? It’s like bees to honey.
If you build a house with a bad foundation you’re going to have problems. The same thing can be said about civilizations. We need to admit we live a world that incentivizes the worst amongst us to attain all meaningful positions of power.
Begging a sociopath for scraps of food might help you survive another day, but it won’t result in sustainable long-term progress. We need to see sociopaths for the societal cancer they are and completely reorient our incentive structure in order to reward conscious, cooperative behavior as opposed to ruthless parasitism. Change the incentives and you’ll change the outcome.
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Who could argue with the premise put forward here by M.K.? The problem is between the knowing and the doing. It is a well known function that as the members of a society in aggregate move towards a more moral way of living; ie: the non aggression – self defense principles, the more stable their society becomes while the people enjoy more freedoms. The opposite, growing chaos and tyranny, is a function of a people who are becoming more immoral in aggregate. We can bet dollars to doughnuts that the elite sociopaths understand these principles and work across a broad spectrum of fronts and levels within fronts to see that morality among the people does not become a new meme. So these Darkfriends social engineer on a grand scale to these ends. It’s really quite simply. Moral behavior is that which does not harm another human being in its exercise while seeking points of common well being for the community at large. This can be extended to the world as a whole mitigating some of the worst human practices that exist today and predate most modern societal structures like monotheism and representative forms of governance. What glue can possibly hold these monsters to the same game plan let alone advancing future agenda with a common front is the wonder that the sociopaths don’t turn to wholesale slaughter of one another? Some have postulated that they have their own religious binding. Could this be what has been called “the old ways” or “old religion” that has much to do with the worship of baphomet type of structure? Whatever the structure is somewhere at the root is the ownership of being able to create all money as debt all owed to oneself as an omnipotent self corrupting power over all human endeavors. If we’re looking for a common place to start a push back?
Those old enough to remember will understand where the problems lie. When we took God out of the schools and forbid His presence in our country, we started on the downhill path to destruction. No longer was there an omnipotent being that could see the wrongs that one was doing. Now one must be accused of wrongs by the presence of hard evidence.
Then “science “ entered the scene with the PILL. Sex was now available without repercussions. Whoopee! Lots of fun and Betty Friedman urged women to forget their role in life and instead do all those things men were doing too.
Parenting became too much work. Let’s just make lots of money and have lots of fun. But some didn’t even take responsibility for their sexual acts. SO…..
Along with His removal, we added abortion – the killing of the weakest members of our society. Margaret Sanger said it would control the “black” population. Keep them in their place and let whites continue to control the country.
When each occurred, we were warned that this would lead to the breakdown of our Constitutional Ideals. No. Neither are spelled out in this honorable document but were a part of the moral fabric of the people who wrote it.
God’s presence gave us not only that watchful eye but also gave us hope. Strangely we recognized the need for hope in our response to it as Obama’s mantra.
Today we worry about the climate. In other days we knew climate was in His control not in ours. And surprise – He took care of it making changes to keep us in balance. (Which He still does but we think we need to take over His work.)
9-11 was a reminder that we needed Him. We flocked to churches and said long remembered prayers. But how quickly we let evil turn our heads
Evil is here because of the choices we make and the choices we let others make for us. Time to place the blame not just on Washington ‘s psychopaths but on each of our putting aside our responsibilities. Wake up America. Time is very short to turn things around. Time to ask God’s forgiveness. Time ti ask Him to once again be our guide and leader.
If we don’t, within 10 years we will no longer have a Constitutional Government but will be a Communist nation. Then you will see how fast government can kill to control us.
this is why decentralization of everything possible is a top priority…
So they fired Saudi Arabia’s oil minister just a few days before an attack ?
Interesting…
Yes, the wrong incentives being in place is a huge deal. It looks like there are two main obstacles to turning this around:
1) With the advent of TBTF we won’t allow corrupt institutions to fail. The Fed and other central banks are determined to keep zombies alive. Voters have very little power to affect central banker policy with all major parties already captured.
2) The vast majority of Boomers, all but the most principled, will oppose this because it involves a reset that would destroy most of their assets. They don’t want to start over in their twilight years.
Only popular uprising can stop anything now. Whether that involves an organic enlightenment or something jarring like war (the real kind, not the kind you watch on TV) remains to be seen.
How to change the incentives:
https://www.ecogood.org/en/
The World has cancer & that cancer is multi-billionaires.
John Doran.
Systems must be designed to destroy the power of the sociopath (midwit careerists who want to prosper at the expense of their fellow citizens qualify).
The leviathan administrative state like the USSR Bolshie state persevered (until it collapsed) because it drew in the useless and corrupt and they fed off the carcass of the productive.
All AngloWest states are now in the same boat as the USSR.
GlobalFinance, nearly in its entirety, is massiely parasitic on productive people and works together with Leviathan to plunder society.
It only ends when it collapses.
The Russian solution was to give up and to pretend to work, but four generations of Russians were sacrificed before it collapsed.
Edit:
The Russian solution was to give up, drink themselves to death, and to pretend to work…
“…our entire economy functions as a promotion mechanism for sociopaths.”
Money quote (irony alert).
Yes, it does, and that quote, repeated endlessly, is a great foundation for anyone wanting to effect cultural/political change..
You have expressed this whole psycho undercurrent very well. This thesis goes a long way to explaining why mankind seems to make the same mistakes throughout history. We can presume that at some point a psycho gets into power and wrecks all the good work done to create one stable society after another. How many good people does it take to stop a sociopath? That’s not the set up for the punchline of a joke.
Well-stated, Andy. Of course, we live in a society that, for reasons of self-esteem, has jettisoned the concepts of evil and of original sin. It has thrown away its defences against sociopathy.
There are always easy answers to problems if one is prepared to look for them, to reason through old ideas with fresh eyes. Below is my contribution to the effort.
There is a bad premise operating in the foundations of Public Finance. Everyone knows it, but refuses to act upon it.
For demonstration, I ask what is the present annual deficit of the US Federal Government. It takes in approximately $3 trillion in tax revenues and spends about $4 trillion. The figures may be more or less, but let us work with these. Everyone: economists, bankers, professionals, yourselves, would say $1 trillion.
How much did the government contribute to its expenditures? The answer is NOTHING. Government does not fund government. Taking or taxing is not earning. The US Government’s deficit is actually $4 trillion, unaccounted as it is. Thus, all government expenditures are deficit financed.
Taxpayers, or rather resident citizens and, specifically, the aggregate of their incomes, assets and property, what I call That Which Funds Government or TWFG, funds government – all of it. It also funds all public debts. And it is this collection of assets held by a community’s citizens that must be examined in order to decide the big questions in Public Finance.
I have done so and found that it makes no difference whether a community has its government tax or borrow to fund public
expenditures. However, there are immense costs in Taxation, in government waste and in deterrence, that disappear with Borrowing. Thus, it is always better that a government borrow instead of tax.
Below is a 10 line proof along with links to 2 short articles and a 6 minute video that explain this novel idea. I offer $10,000 for the flaw that defeats the proof. None has ever found it.
http://www.economart.ca/deficit-question/
http://www.economart.ca/taxorborrow/
******
Proof:
The simple 10 line proof below confirms that it makes no difference to the aggregate of assets, property, and incomes that comprise That
Which Funds Gov’t, TWFG, whether government taxes or borrows.
The proof substitutes Disposable Income for TWFG. Only resident citizens may lend to the government.
Let us say that government shall fund public expenditures in 2 scenarios: Taxation and Borrowing with effects wrought upon the
aggregate Disposable Income (Y) of a community. Two time periods, T1 and T2, are required to illustrate, firstly, initial taxing and borrowing and, secondly, subsequent repayment of borrowed funds. Gov’t expenditure has a value of G in T1 and nil in T2.
Scenario 1 – Taxation
T1: Disposable income is Y1 – G.
T2: Disposable income = Y2.
Scenario 2 – Borrowing
T1: Disposable income is Y1 – G = Y1 – loaned Savings (S) = Y1 – S
T2: Disposable income is Y2 – public debt + loaned savings, both with interest (R) added = Y2 – S(1 + R) + S(1 + R) = Y2 – 0 = Y2
*****
Let us say there is an economy of 100 units – 40 units seized by government through Taxation and 60 units left to the population. With Taxation abolished and government forced to borrow directly from the public, the costs of Taxation, squander and deterrence, disappear.
With deterrence erased, let us say the economy grows to 130 units. With squander erased the government share declines to 20 units.
So which economy should one prefer?
One of 100 units in size that leaves 60 units to its people? Or an economy of 130 units that leaves 130 – 20 or 110 units to the same?
Not a difficult choice is it?
A better solution is that a gov. is NOT ALLOWED to borrow. That solves most problems. Taxing should only be for basic infrastructure, water, roads, electricity, localized security. Not much ore than that.
Jon Ronson ‘the pschopath test’ is a good companion piece to this article
Again, Milgram and Zimbardo have unequivocally demonstrated how the socio/psychopaths obtain and remain in power… abuse of authority, most often illegitimate authority. There is little legitimate authority left in the world, as legitimate authority can only be granted by the consent of an engaged and FULLY informed population.
Bernays provided the propaganda template at the core of the socio/psychopaths cookbook for keeping the public un/misinformed.
“Authority” by dint of religion, force, corporate/banking austerity or divine right to rule is by definition illegitimate because the public is not truly asked their position on matters like war or corporate power.
War declaration by a (even nominally) democratic country should ONLY happen with a 2/3 majority in a mandatory plebiscite. The price tag for the current/past Zionist/NATO wars would make most voters think that tax cash could be better used building infrastructure and providing free medical/education. One US cruise missile could go a long way towards building/running a US school or hospital.
“Who controls the issuance of money controls the government!” Nathan Meyer Rothschild
Which Corporations Control the World?
A surprisingly small number of corporations control massive global market shares. How many of the brands below do you use? It’s a Small World at the Top.
http://www.internationalbusinessguide.org/corporations/
“Control the oil, and you control nations. Control the food, and you control the people.” Henry Kissenger