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The Pushback Heroes of the Long, Hot Summer

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82 Comments

  1. Catherine’s reply has so much depth to it, as does the red-button problem which is really a comment on our complicity with evil.

    I ran across this while reading about Ancient China. Maybe it will be of interest to some:

    she 社 associations

    Two types of she 社 associations existed during the Tang (690-705 AD): official and private ones. Private she (sishe 私社) were voluntary social welfare organizations which existed continuously and were quite popular in Dunhuang from the late Tang through the Five Dynasties and the early Song (1279 AD).

    private associations involved only part of the population and members joined into associations spontaneously, more or less on a voluntary basis. Members nominated the officers, and members were equal “as brothers” regardless of their social status outside the she. The association purpose, function, and the rights and responsibilities of members were no longer based on tradition but were governed by the association’s bylaws and other types of social contracts, which could also be inherited by the members’ descendants.

    In general, the Three Officers (sanguan 三官) handled the daily affairs
    of the she. The Three Officers were either the president (shezhang 社長), manager (sheguan 社官) and secretary (lushi 錄事), or the president, manager and elder (shelao 社老), all of whom were elected by the members. Usually one had to petition to become a member, and also had to petition to quit the association.

    Members were equal in front of the association bylaws, and had none of that strict hierarchy seen in government organizations. Since members participated in laying down the bylaws, they were both involved in formulating the basic principles of the she and shared a responsibility to follow those.

    The Three Officers and the members differed from one another in terms of their duties, rather than being superiors and subordinates. Especially since it was the members who elected the Three Officers, the assembly was the highest organ of the she, and this effectively prevented the alienation of power which commonly occurred in autocratic regimes. According to the associations’ principles, all matters had to be recorded in written form and were open to members. Hence the association maintained its transparency, and this guaranteed its healthy existence and development.

    The essence of she associations was in forming a community in which members helped one another and relied on the power of the group to
    overcome problems and disasters which would be difficult to handle
    alone. Common sense suggests that in a social situation where the majority of people are poor, it is the poor who need to unite and help one another. Apart from the extremely poor who were excluded from she associations, the ordinary people all had a chance to become members, even if the contributions put a considerable burden on them. Although she associations in Dunhuang included members of different social standing, the overall majority of them came from middle and lower social strata.

    so about 1300 years ago in ancient china, these people weren’t worried about conspiracies, they were busy starting their own.

    1. Dear Andrzej
      Thank you for sharing that information.
      Associations have been an valuable way for immigrant communities to help each and prosper and avoid the big banks. Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese associations are often based upon its members having the same family name. In this parallel world there are also money lenders who can be ruthless.
      For a more contemporary take on associations you might want to look into the story of Abacus, a credit union in New York’s Chinatown. If you are not familiar with this story Solari has already covered it here:
      https://home.solari.com/food-for-the-soul-abacus-small-enough-to-jail/
      About China in general, I can recommend the book ‘The Party’ by McGregor.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Party%3A_The_Secret_World_of_China's_Communist_Rulers

    2. I am looking for some good books on the history of China. I have yet to find really good ones.
      Do you have any suggestions?
      Alissa

    3. Great intelligence. Thank you so much for posting. Maybe we should call them Solari syndicates. 🙂

  3. Catherine,

    I am now catching up all your work covering the Chinese middle class. It reminds me of Jim Rogers who said something similar in the 90s when he moved his family to Singapore and started teaching his daughters Mandarin.

    So while I am catching up on all this and was already aware of this idea of China being the new superpower at least when it comes to its rising middle class. I can’t help but think about someone who has been to China, my dear friend, Charles Hugh Smith and how he taught me that China has some major problems. One of them being the consequences of the one-child policy has lead to majority male population who is going to expect to graduate college and find jobs that will not be there.

    The other issue is, the Yuan is pegged to the dollar. It does not float on the open market, so nobody knows what its true value is and the suspicion is if the Chinese Communist Party let the yuan float tomorrow, its value would drop to zero.

    Third, the United States government still dominates militarily when it comes to the seas.

    So all that has me skeptical about their dominance and on a personal level, I have never found Mandarin an interesting language as much as I find Russian a more interesting language to learn. The more I hear people mention its time to learn Mandarin the more I want to learn Russian, outside of the Italian language I just love the way the Russian language sounds. And if pressed even harder to learn Mandarin, I am going to go learn Japanese, the other language I love the sound of.

    1. Yes, I find it fascinating. Posted it a while back. Looks promising – would love to hear from people who tried it.

  5. Terrific M&M report. Is it possible to get a link to the 1930 cartoon? I’d like to share it with my tribe.
    July 24th is World Ivermectin Day. Hurray for global push back!
    Thanks, Kathleen

    1. IS THE BEST WAY TO ORDER IVERMECTIN STILL FROM OVERSEAS?
      I.E. NO SCRIPT NEEDED????

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