May 6, 2021

The Jackpot Chronicles Scenario #4: Atlas Shrugged

It occurred to me that I never did finish the final instalment of last summer’s Jackpot Chronicles, wherein I posited four possible post-Covid scenarios.

For a quick refresher, The Jackpot is concept I cribbed from William Gibson. It’s a term he uses across a few of his near-future cyberpunk novels that describes a series of rolling global catastrophes that set in sometime around 2016 (his stories span multiverses, and timelines, but the common theme is that somewhere around 2016, some kind of irrevocable glitch in the matrix occurred that put a permanent end to normalcy as it has been understood up until that point).

If there was a Jackpot, whatever it was, it could arguably have happened at many points throughout the 20th century, or if we wanted to confine our speculation to the 21st century then, 9/11 or the GFC would do. Everything after that being symptomatic as opposed to causal.

And then… 2020 and COVID hit. That’s when the fabric of time cleaves us into the before times and The Jackpot.


The other post-pandemic scenarios from the rest of my Jackpot series were:

  1. Force Majeure: The wheels come off completely and the system comes unglued. Mad Max.
  2. Tin Foil Hat: It really is one Big Conspiracy and we’re into a New World Order.
  3. The Great Bifurcation: The middle class gets wiped out and we get a two-tier society

I had thought the fourth scenario would be the one themed Deglobalization, and to a certain extent it still is. In the original outline I described that Deglobalization:

“Is where multi-national corporations, so shaken from this Near Death Experience, realizing their error of betting the farm on just-in-time supply chains, labour cost arbitrage and having zero buffers, begin pulling manufacturing back home.

The smart ones start building cushions and shock absorbers into their business logic, and they begin to eschew leverage after being on the wrong side of a series of cascading liquidity implosions. In other words, businesses begin to transition themselves into what I called “Transition Companies” as posited in the inaugural posting for [this blog]”.

I also went on to say that I considered this one most desirable yet least likely. My view on this scenario has changed somewhat, and I also think that the staggering government ineptitude and duplicity at all levels in all jurisdictions (with few notable exceptions) has made our regeared “4th scenario” more likely given that it’s in progress. Mass demonstrations, mass exoduses, crypto-currencies are symptoms of a Great Reject, or as I’ve renamed this scenario “Atlas Shrugged“.

The TL,DR of the novel, Atlas Shrugged is that once the institutional sclerosis of the ruling class was understood to be both incorrigible and irreversible, the only other option was a global opt-out. There was no Great Reset in Atlas Shrugged. They got The Great Reject instead.

Under the Atlas Shrugged scenario, deglobalization is just one of numerous motivating factors, but it’s mainly an outcome of a larger dynamic where all non-ruling factions in society lose faith in the prevailing structure of Neoliberal Globalism (a.k.a “Mr. Global”). With Mr. Global’s viability in question, people begin to look for the exits.

This begins to occur on two fronts. What Vilfredo Pareto called “the non-governing elites” begin to realize that the system which used to accommodate them, even rely on their tacit support, is now becoming hostile toward them. At the very least, the ruling elites are undermining their interests. This is part of the dynamic of Peter Turchin’s “elite overpopulation” that we looked at recently.

The other front is the comparatively powerless underclass, which, in pace with Pareto’s Theory of Elite Cycles, lose their moorings and standing within the system they are expected to adhere to. The social contract no longer seems to be a matter of middle-class protections and living standards but instead becomes starkly authoritarian and one-sided. What is clear is that the existing institutions are now functioning to defend the position of the overclass, not to uphold the rights and liberties of the underclass.

The culmination of multiple super-cycles (Pareto’s Elite Cycles, Turchin’s long term dynamics of sociopolitical instability, debt, a Fourth Turning, and a Maunder Minimum for good measure) combined with an accelerated onslaught of technological innovation: Internet, crypto-currencies …biotech? Nanotech? Micro nuke? Fusion? Quantum computing? We have all the necessary components for a complete breakdown of existing institutions and the total loss of legitimacy of the current governing elite class.

So it goes in our Atlas Shrugged scenario. Various interests of many forms and myriad factions, from dissident states (like Florida), to decentralized and virtual companies, emergent DAO’s, all the way to individuals and cultural tribes all begin to experience these moments of clarity in their own way. From there they will act in their own rational self-interests and cooperate with others doing the same in order to navigate the breakdown of Mr. Global.

In spite of this, Mr. Global’s prevailing policymakers and governance structures will frantically maneuver and spin narratives of fear and fantasy in order to keep the existing system on the rails.

They walked back the second one, but not the first one.

That is what The Great Reset really is: it’s an attempt at a zeitgeist-level rationalization that doubles-down on institutional failure on the part of the entire governance structure of Mr. Global, and gives them a new lease on life to remain in charge. Reimagined by the Davos crew, amplified by the mainstream media, lubricated by Big Tech.

The antidote to all of this are crypto-currencies, smart contracts and decentralization.

That antidote also brings significant upside regardless of which one of our four possible scenarios plays out.

When I listen to people who are complete denial about crypto, I realize that there is a common thread in their objections (what made me think about all this today was listening to Michael Pento’s criticisms of Bitcoin on George Gammon’s Rebel Capitalist. Pento’s 2012 book on the inevitable bursting of the bond bubble is a must read. That book helped be form the basis on what I think is the funds flow that is actually putting a floor under crypto. I don’t begrudge Pento for not seeing it, because as I’ll explain, he’s looking at it through the wrong lens)

We could go on for hours about how most of these people haven’t really delved into the technology or what it means, how their criticisms at the defects around Bitcoin apply even more accurately to US dollars (“backed by nothing”, “infinite supply”, “uses too much energy”, et al). But what they all have in common is that they all posit that whether Bitcoin and cryptos succeed or fail is premised on whether the existing establishment will permit it.

What will the Fed do? What if the government bans it? Won’t the World Bank just create their own CBDC?

This is completely inverted. They have it backwards. It’s not up to the existing system, because the existing system is over. That’s the part they don’t get.

Nation state establishments within the twilight of a declining system should be thinking deeply about their place in the new reality of network states, not pontificating how they will lord over this new landscape. The coming system will be multipolar in not just the geopolitical dimension, but across cyberspace and the network dimensions as well.

Instead, the incumbent system is busy banning menthol cigarettes, gearing up for negative interest rates and undergoing mass conversion to a peculiar new religion called Wokeness.

It won’t work, and it brings to mind a particularly vivid example I once heard about a balloon disaster that still makes me cringe when I think of it:

A group of people were embarking on a balloon ride and as they were just a foot or two off the ground, the burner erupted into flames. The balloon pilot realized the situation immediately and he leapt from the gondola which was still only a few feet off the ground.

 

One or two of the passengers were quick witted enough to realize what this meant and followed him. This set off a feedback loop: as the fire expanded, its hot air forcing the balloon higher, combined with the weight reductions as the first few people bailed out, the situation very quickly escalated past a point of no return.

 

The balloon had accelerated very rapidly to heights from which it was no longer possible to leap safely. The unfortunates who had hesitated and were trapped in a gondola being propelled higher by a fireball, to their inevitable doom.

That’s what our entire situation feels like today. The balloon is still hanging a foot or so above the ground, the canopy is on fire, and the people who have figured out what this means are bailing out while they can and in doing so they are accelerating the ultimate burn-then-crash of the entire system.


In Rand’s book they went to a hidden valley called “Galt’s Gulch” and used their skills and their resources to restore new communities while the old systems imploded. If this scenario plays out we’d be looking for people creating a decentralized, network of gulches. Seeking each other out who are pursuing this same goals, creating open protocols to to rebuild civil societies and autonomous communities built on the ageless principles of free markets, liberty and prosperity.

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About the author 

Mark E. Jeftovic

Mark E. Jeftovic is the founder of Bombthrower Media and CEO of easyDNS.com, a company he co-founded in 1998 which has been operating along the lines described within these pages.

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  1. Your grasp on the zeitgeist is luminous. I grew up reading Gibson, I read Human Action, twice, I jumped into the dark web markets before they were 2 years old, and I am now a seasoned blockchain programmer. In the burning balloon scenario, I am that first guy, except trying to find a tether so the actual event that occurs, doesn't.

  2. How about a darker shade of gray for your primary font? Better yet black as God intended. Your worthy content is painful to read.

  3. Mark, my take is that you have omitted that governments take from the productive and give to the unproductive and have done so since the first city-state (Ur, Mesopotamia comes to mind ). THAT IS WHAT GOVERNMENTS DO!

    A tipping point caused by the imbalance between production and consumption occurs signaling consumers that they have more power than the producers with the consequence that the stacked-deck society tumbling (A vivid picture is of the Mediterranean States circa 1177 BCE in the late Bronze age…., and nothing fundamental to the existence of a Human Society has changed since then.)

    The various types of moneyed class folk you discuss are PIWing without the required productivity of goods and services to make such edifices meaningful.

      1. No, that's irrelevant, and likewise your question.

        I'm more interested in the person, and her own personal political, social and economic beliefs, which are well-documented.

        1. Your logical fallacies are…. Genetic (also known as “poisoning the well”)

          https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/genetic

          and Appeal to Authority.

          https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority

          You literally and admittedly don’t know what you’re rendering an opinion on and you are relying on the opinions of sources you perceive to be authoritative to make your judgement.

          Also, I never even mentioned Rand by name, I made an analogy to one of her books. So you’re off making illogically constructed non-arguments about stuff we aren’t even talking about.

          Please refrain from commenting further unless you bring some critical thinking to the table.

          1. Haha haha

            My god, you far right "libertarians" are so gormless and feckless.

            If you're not sure, it means you're very dumb.

            Firstly, you don't have the courage or the intellectual rigor to post my links in support of my argument, and then you claim I'm making logical fallacies and appeal to authority, when in fact, that's what you're doing with your whole inane argument… hilarious.

            You mentioned Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged multiple times, so it's more than an analogy… perhaps you better familiarise yourself with what analogies mean.

            "Please refrain from commenting further unless you bring some critical thinking to the table."

            Perhaps you should take your own advice. Again, hilarious.

            You far-right fools are such hypocrites, and you exemplify the meaning of Poe's law.

          2. Your logical fallacy is: Ad Hominem.

            https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem

            This is really all you have, non-arguments and insults, blog spamming links I’m not interested in, nor obligated to publicize because guess what, you’re in my house here.

            Why don’t you go write up some intellectually stunning opus about Ayn Rand and feckless libertarians on your own blog any maybe you and the rest of your intellectually impaired NPCs can have a circle jerk over it.

            We’re done here, any future comments from you will be removed.

    1. Ayn Rand believed sodomy was an abomination. Gay men deal with a lot of shit already just doing what they do. They don't need Ayn Rand giving them a moral conscience that they are filthy.

      1. AFAIK, Rand never said a single thing about sodomy. Her two known written statements on the subject of homosexuality were about lesbianism. She was also publicly against laws that discriminated against homosexuals because (shock and horror) she also believed that despite what she personally thought about it, it was really none of her business when it came to what other consenting adults did.

        Imagine if all the left wing social justice mobs thought like that. There would be no such thing as “cancel culture”.

  4. Sounds like you'd appreciate the t-shirt I made: Who is {John Gault}-striked out Satoshi Nakamoto?

  5. I agree with your view of the future. However, I don't see how a few folks working at a local level can make a difference for themselves or society in general. I also am totally uncertain what actions a local community organization could undertake to make a difference.

    1. At the local level:

      Rural folk can get together to ensure people have food and shelter, They tend to know their neighbours, anyway, and many own guns.

      In the city, people will have to get out and talk to their neighbours, which is a stretch for many. They will have to organize defence patrols, prepare primitive weapons, and fortify their homes. It won't be pretty.

    1. Oh, don't be so pessimistic. Upon arguing with a perceived idiot, one may discover a latent, hidden natural talent for the thing themselves.

  6. Does anyone remember DR. SAX by Jack Kerouac ? I'll go with that. I mean, how coulld you leave out the Book of Revelations? Lame.

  7. Great article. Appreciate your thoughts. And you are spot on. Any system that's based on lies and anti-freedom is bound to crash. The only guestion is when. Psychopaths lack humanity so they are truly limited in every way.

  8. It's lucky that the 'antidote of crypto currencies' will not be selectively targeted by The Evil Ones, whilst allowing the rest of the (acceptable) on-line activity to continue. Yes?

  9. There is an element of impossibility in the Gulches scenario
    Islands of liberty or prosperity will be a target for the outside proletariat led by their violent leaders.
    How could they survive?
    The basic problem of globalism is not to keep chinese-indian gadgets out. It is how to keep the Chinese and the Indians out of our backyards, and to prevent their consumption level to crash the environment.

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