Oligarchy - The Book

[niemivh]

My god.  This is an amazing book and I'm not even 100 pages into it yet.  I can't wait to get home to continue reading it.  If the rest of the book is as good as the part I've already read then this is the book I would have written had my life taken a different path and I was 10 years older.

http://www.amazon.com/Oligarchy-Jeffrey-A-Winters/dp/0521182980/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343847115&sr=8-1&keywords=oligarchy

I challenge and recommend every user on this forum to read this book.  Prior to this book I was recommending a host of other books to best illustrate my opinions on such matters as economic theory and social morality.  But this book seems to best 'get to the bottom' of what I was trying to illustrate with a myriad of other books.  Plus it's shorter and more concisely gets the point across.

The central thesis of the book is something so obvious that it has taken hundreds of hacks, scribblers and paid-off and bankrupt ideologues to confuse the people of the USA what their ancestors used to know, that being:

*  That there has always existed an oligarchical class wherever there is large discrepancies of wealth (legitimacy of that wealth notwithstanding)
*  That this group is interested above all else in growing and maintaining their wealth
*  This is the primary focus to understand the entirety of history, politics, socio-organizations and much else, as it is an ever-present force that is universal in character.  It is a universal historical consent, and therefore integral to understanding anything about history and present day events.

Nothing could, in fact, be more obvious than these basic tenets and if present and past events are viewed through this perspective it is infinitely more valuable of an analysis.  Yet through the ideology of Classical Liberalism and its most rancid and virulent present form: Libertarianism; us Westerners have been made to forget these most elementary facts.

Read this book and you'll have a greater understanding of where I'm coming from than anything I've previously cited as a thing to read.  I can already tell that this book is going to be classic - that is, if we are to have any chance at a future, then it must be.

Who's going to take up the challenge?

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[knight22]

Is it giving exact names, institutions, dates and places?

[niemivh]

Is it giving exact names, institutions, dates and places?

Yes, yes, yes and yes.

Summary of the book via Amazon.

"For centuries, oligarchs were viewed as empowered by wealth, an idea muddled by elite theory early in the twentieth century. The common thread for oligarchs across history is that wealth defines them, empowers them, and inherently exposes them to threats. The existential motive of all oligarchs is wealth defense. How they respond varies with the threats they confront, including how directly involved they are in supplying the coercion underlying all property claims, and whether they act separately or collectively. These variations yield four types of oligarchy: warring, ruling, sultanistic, and civil. Oligarchy is not displaced by democracy but rather is fused with it. Moreover, the rule of law problem in many societies is a matter of taming oligarchs. Cases studied in this book include the United States, ancient Athens and Rome, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, medieval Venice and Siena, mafia commissions in the United States and Italy, feuding Appalachian families, and early chiefs cum oligarchs dating from 2300 BCE."

[myrkul]

niemivh, I think I'll give this one a shot. I'll let you know my thoughts on the matter once I've finished it.

[Ragnar17]

Ill read it...interested to hear what got you all excited

[niemivh]

Ill read it...interested to hear what got you all excited

This is probably going to end up being one of my top two books.

[niemivh]

niemivh, I think I'll give this one a shot. I'll let you know my thoughts on the matter once I've finished it.

+9001

I'm telling you, it'll be worth it.  Much more condensed than the things I was cited you earlier.  This will do the job of what all those other books might not have been able to do.

[myrkul]

niemivh, I think I'll give this one a shot. I'll let you know my thoughts on the matter once I've finished it.

+9001

I'm telling you, it'll be worth it.  Much more condensed than the things I was cited you earlier.  This will do the job of what all those other books might not have been able to do.

I'm not sure how it will convince me that the answer to a feared concentration of power is a concentration of power, but, like I said, I'll give it a shot. It may be some time, though... Twins, ya know.

[Ragnar17]

anyone know where I can get this book for free/less than 13 bucks?

[myrkul]

anyone know where I can get this book for free/less than 13 bucks?

Check to see if it's available at your local library. Couldn't hurt.

[Ragnar17]

ya already did. My libraries suck

[cbeast]

This look like an interesting book, but it's not a new idea. Jefferson warned us about them. Kubrick threaded this theme throughout his films. It's not a conspiracy though, it's just who we are. Just being in this forum you are helping to enlighten the future about the nature of money. It's always technology that gives us progress.

[niemivh]

This look like an interesting book, but it's not a new idea. Jefferson warned us about them. Kubrick threaded this theme throughout his films. It's not a conspiracy though, it's just who we are. Just being in this forum you are helping to enlighten the future about the nature of money. It's always technology that gives us progress.

It clearly shouldn't be a new idea, but here in the Western World oligarchy and the rule of wealth has been largely conditioned out of us, and it wasn't an accident or a coincidence.  This book firmly re-establishes ancient to contemporary history showing that oligarchy is alive and well and must be considered as one of the central tenants, one of the prime movers for modern political realities.  To not understand it is to be forever politically blind and flailing in the dark.

[niemivh]

anyone know where I can get this book for free/less than 13 bucks?

Do you have any bitcoins?

[niemivh]

niemivh, I think I'll give this one a shot. I'll let you know my thoughts on the matter once I've finished it.

+9001

I'm telling you, it'll be worth it.  Much more condensed than the things I was cited you earlier.  This will do the job of what all those other books might not have been able to do.

I'm not sure how it will convince me that the answer to a feared concentration of power is a concentration of power, but, like I said, I'll give it a shot. It may be some time, though... Twins, ya know.

Here is some pictures to explain the, perhaps, subtle differences in our views of 'what is, presently, in power?' and 'what is at the heart of the evils of our present day system?'


You see this:
The State



I see this:
The Oligarchy



You see this:
The State


I see this:
The Oligarchy


You see this:
The State


I see this:
The Oligarchy



Hope that was as fun for you as it was for me.
 

[FirstAscent]

anyone know where I can get this book for free/less than 13 bucks?

Check to see if it's available at your local library. Couldn't hurt.

That's interesting advice, coming from you. I recall recommending a few books to you, and suggested the library as a source to enable you to read the books. I didn't appreciate your answer, quoted within the dialog below:

Please go to a library and get a copy of one of the books I recommended to you.

That is not free of additional expense. I can understand why one might be unwilling to leave the house (or work, as the case may be) and head to the library. What you are refusing to do is click a link. You have literally expended more energy refusing to do a simple task that I require before discussing the book with you than you would have spent doing it.

[niemivh]

anyone know where I can get this book for free/less than 13 bucks?

Check to see if it's available at your local library. Couldn't hurt.

That's interesting advice, coming from you. I recall recommending a few books to you, and suggested the library as a source to enable you to read the books. I didn't appreciate your answer, quoted within the dialog below:

Please go to a library and get a copy of one of the books I recommended to you.

That is not free of additional expense. I can understand why one might be unwilling to leave the house (or work, as the case may be) and head to the library. What you are refusing to do is click a link. You have literally expended more energy refusing to do a simple task that I require before discussing the book with you than you would have spent doing it.

Oh jeeeze.  Here we go again.

 

[FirstAscent]

anyone know where I can get this book for free/less than 13 bucks?

Check to see if it's available at your local library. Couldn't hurt.

That's interesting advice, coming from you. I recall recommending a few books to you, and suggested the library as a source to enable you to read the books. I didn't appreciate your answer, quoted within the dialog below:

Please go to a library and get a copy of one of the books I recommended to you.

That is not free of additional expense. I can understand why one might be unwilling to leave the house (or work, as the case may be) and head to the library. What you are refusing to do is click a link. You have literally expended more energy refusing to do a simple task that I require before discussing the book with you than you would have spent doing it.

Oh jeeeze.  Here we go again.

 

It needn't be that way. If myrkul advocates going to the library after all, he can jolly well head on down to one himself and pick up a few books on various subjects.

[niemivh]

anyone know where I can get this book for free/less than 13 bucks?

Check to see if it's available at your local library. Couldn't hurt.

That's interesting advice, coming from you. I recall recommending a few books to you, and suggested the library as a source to enable you to read the books. I didn't appreciate your answer, quoted within the dialog below:

Please go to a library and get a copy of one of the books I recommended to you.

That is not free of additional expense. I can understand why one might be unwilling to leave the house (or work, as the case may be) and head to the library. What you are refusing to do is click a link. You have literally expended more energy refusing to do a simple task that I require before discussing the book with you than you would have spent doing it.

Oh jeeeze.  Here we go again.

 

It needn't be that way. If myrkul advocates going to the library after all, he can jolly well head on down to one himself and pick up a few books on various subjects.

Let's try to keep this thread on topic, that being this book and the ideas that are contained within it.

Please?

 

[myrkul]

Let's try to keep this thread on topic, that being this book and the ideas that are contained within it.

Please?

 

Rest assured, I'm not going to rise to his troll-bait. If he has something productive to say, I'll respond, but crap like that gets an eye-roll and a click on the "hide" link.

As to this:

Hope that was as fun for you as it was for me.
 

Yeah, that was pretty funny. Rest assured, though, I see the dude behind the curtain. Just because I tell the people, "Hey, that Wizard is an ass-hole" doesn't mean that I don't also tell the people who agree that yeah, the wizard is an asshole that he's just a dude behind the curtain. But if I start shouting on the rooftops that the wizard is just a dude behind a curtain, I'll get laughed at.