Previously, when the Earth was a real civilization, the population was led by the aristocracy – people of high level of development, which served as an example to follow. With the arrival of the Romanovs, the aristocracy was destroyed, and there were elites… Among the many causes of the global crisis that we are experiencing, we should also mention the crisis of the elites. The concept is very vague, but in the public mind they are considered to be a community of people, especially with a lot of money and from different spheres of power. These people make key decisions (right or wrong), and the impact of the latter is visible across regions, countries and the world.
Unfortunately, today it is impossible to include those who were previously called “intellectual elite”, as these people do not influence the events for a long time, do not form their content, but only pick up someone else’s and comment. The closest example is in the recently published collection of lectures by A. Pyatigorsk under the strange name “the Free philosopher Pyatigorsk” (really there are unfree philosophers).
Each lecture is preceded by Piatigorsky worthless “mnogotomnym and broadcast” argument about this lecture (reasoning, having a volume of lectures) of a modern “philosopher” type of Kobrin. As they say in their circles, they “reflect”. In a word, it is customary to put much more values than it can hold, but overall it is a very good reflection unfree, ex-servicemen as “the intellectual elite”.
Why is this crisis happening?
First of all, let us pay attention to the problem, which is that the “ceiling of opportunities” for elites with huge States, has long been achieved, and, since it is impossible to grow further, begins, as in nature, an ugly curvature. Once a very wealthy man in a private conversation said: “after a million dollars ceases to grow welfare.” And then he explained: “you go to the most expensive restaurant, but there is no more expensive at all desire. You buy the most expensive car – more expensive, as outside higher prices start only pure show-off and meaningless gadgets. The most expensive things – more expensive there is no, for again same, outside a certain prices begins outright and vulgar-vulgar insanity type gold toilet bowls. It’s a dead end.”
It would seem, it is very improbable-pessimistic looks. After all the territory mastered by huge money, all the same it is possible to expand. To build a huge Palace in 1800 rooms (so, they say that somewhere in Russia a certain bourgeois built a copy of Versailles), and then another, to buy 30 different very expensive cars, a yacht the size of an aircraft carrier, etc. However, where financial problems end, problems begin immediately from the field of pure psychology, as well as heredity. Especially if we talk about the Russian elite.
A person who grew up in one or three rooms (or even in a communal apartment) – and these are all representatives who come from the USSR, because the mass change has not yet grown up – still in any Palace live in these very one or three rooms. Their consciousness, personality and could not expand, grow to the extent where you can take at least eight or ten rooms, for this growth is formed only by the experience of generations, and not watching glossy magazines.
It at I. Goncharov the uncle in all seriousness could speak to the nephew who fell to it on the head: “the apartment at me, as you can see, single, for one: a hall, a drawing room, a dining room, an office, still a study, a dressing room Yes a toilet – there is no excess room. I’d embarrass you and you’d embarrass me.…»
It in 1914 Yu. Shamurin, the author of one of articles about the estate of Sukhanovo, could write “the manor house is small and uninteresting” while in it there were 72 refined rooms.
Today, anyone who smiles when reading the two episodes above will never be able to live in a Palace other than in an apartment. Moreover, the Palace structure, enfilade layout, diverse decoration of the rooms was necessary for the maintenance and approval of a certain, now lost and very elegant and beautiful lifestyle (recall, people who lived in the palaces, for the most part did not go to the service, so that they could enjoy the interiors and parks), and not to return after midnight from the Bank or the state office to devour and bryaknutsya in a huge hall in the style of Napoleon III in front of a modern TV, which in these interiors, to put it mildly ahhh!
It is the poet Rublevka built mansions, the style of which shows primarily the indelible County-kitchen mentality of the owners and their good acquaintance with the Soviet sanatorium classicism, and not with the best examples of world architecture. That is, the current elite has not been able to create its own architectural and spatial style, which would recognize it in our days and later, unlike its predecessors, who lived a century earlier, whose mansions are examples of taste, style and became the face of the era.
And no amount of money does not give inner freedom, does not expand the space of the individual, does not bring up taste. Moreover, big money begins to give rise to discomfort that can not be overcome. Machines 30 pieces, but at all desire it is physically impossible to go simultaneously on at least two. Room 1800, but to live, whichever way, it turns out only three or four and the toilet still needs to be in native prefab building, behind the wall, for race night barefoot dancing through a Suite of dozens of empty and dark halls to the exit door of retired not very convenient. And to enjoy the night vases, as it was informed, the koi in the morning from the blind bore servant, today accepted only in childhood.
A bottle of cognac costs 50 thousand euros, but you revel in it as well as in Armenian in three stars. And well, if you still see the difference – this vision should also be brought up. Not to mention the fact that all this modern plastic television you make strangers on someone else’s sketches, samples for which are taken, as a rule, from the interiors of expensive Western hotels, which the customer has seen enough, traveling abroad, and the palaces,museums, he does not go. And, equally important, millions and even billions do not guarantee longevity and health – the example of Steve jobs is very clear.
Then begins the agony 80 years ago, has already experienced Bender: “What do I do now? he pondered. – How to dispose of the cursed meal, which enriches me only moral torments? Burn it, or what?”This will be my tipster stopped with pleasure. “Just in my room there is a fireplace. Burn him in the fireplace! It’s majestic! Cleopatra’s Deed! Into the fire! Pack after pack! Why should I bother with them? No, silly. Burning money is a fad! The hussars! What can I do with them, other than the nepman grub? Stupid position! The Museum Manager is going for three hundred rubles to make the Louvre, any team of some water workers or a cooperative Corporation of dram writers for a million can build a semi-skyscraper with a flat roof for lectures in the fresh air. And Ostap Bender, a descendant of the Janissaries, can’t do a damn thing! Here is piled class-hegemon on millionaire-alone!»
That is inevitably followed by pangs of stupidity. Namely – excess money begin to destroy, returning its painfully swollen state to the one that somehow can be mastered and comprehended within the indestructible kitchen mentality of an area of three square meters. Surplus disposal has successfully developed a whole industry – the super-expensive resorts, casino greasy, truffle for 50 thousand Euro, masterpieces of Hirst and Beuys, “Mercedes” in rhinestones and more to successfully conduct financial liposuction. In the best case, part of the surplus to distribute to the poor, feeling poor, but not poor.
Another very serious problem
After overcoming the bar of the conditional million, the difference between just rich and super-rich disappears. Thanks to the above “ceiling”, the average rich, which has 100 million and the owner of “Zara” with its 70 billion are equal in opportunities. I mean, just equal.
And the number of those who have 100 million or less in today’s world is already very large, and the number of those who have tens of billions is growing much more slowly. Look at how many “Porches”,” Maybakhs “and” Bentley “on the streets of Moscow – from the subject of exceptional luxury and attention, when everyone turned around on the streets after the car – they turned into everyday cars, if not worse. He saw in Moscow “hammer” pink with the inscription “pizza delivery”, there are taxi services, where the call comes “Bentley”.
There is something to be sad for those who 10-15 years ago were among the first to buy all these cars. As a result, the super-rich have a desire at any cost to demonstrate their exclusivity, to break away from the pressing on the heels of “plebeians”, which leads to another eccentric antics such as pens and cufflinks for tens of millions, iPhones and bras in diamonds, but no more.
The crisis in which the world plunged, put all these people in an even more difficult position
Having nothing but money, they earn and produce only money. This is especially true of our oligarchs, who did not create anything of their own, but only successfully took someone else’s, or, according to the American sociologist D. Harvey, made “accumulation by deprivation of property rights” strictly within the neoliberal economic concept.
That is, it is money (their number) that they see as the main protection against all external shocks, the comprador formula “to save always, to save everywhere, until the days of the last Donets” to wait out the storm and survive, begins to work in full force.
This removed all restrictions (primarily moral, and it means that you start to Rob the poor), is included only on the speculative attitude (even market) profit, like nosovskiy of Superfield.
“Scooperfield for some reason took it into his head that his already enormous fortune should constantly grow, and if he managed to increase his capital by at least one fermenting, he was ready to jump for joy; when it was necessary to spend the furting, he was desperate, it seemed to him that the light of destruction begins, that soon all the furtings, as if under the influence of some evil force, will float away from his chests and he will turn from a rich man into a beggar.”
No one in a crisis situation wants to risk and invest in something promising and, especially, long-term – profits should be maximized and obtained as soon as possible. And such a profit is usually obtained only by robbery and speculation. It is no coincidence that the main subject of the world financial market today has become a financial speculator. Thus, during the crisis, American securities firms (i.e., speculation) earned $ 83 billion in 2011-2012, while in 1989-1993 they earned only $ 77 billion.
That is why today the income of the elite arise mainly as a result of the withdrawal of money in various ways from the less well-off strata. For more than 30 years, inequality between rich and poor has been growing throughout the Western world. In the United States, this inequality has now reached its historic peak, reaching the level of 1929, the year followed by the “great depression.”
The abolition of state medicine, education, social security, various benefits and allowances has already begun. The real average salary of an American has not increased since 1973, and the growth of welfare occurred only at the expense of credit debt. A recent fed report openly suggests that 2/3 of American households are unable to raise $ 400 in cash without selling property or borrowing from relatives or friends. Since 2008, 70% of Americans have reduced their spending on vacation and entertainment, 40% began to spend on current needs of savings for old age and education of children, 29% began to borrow from a close circle.
In the largest countries of the old world, the policy of “austerity” is being introduced everywhere, causing constant strikes. In France, it is planned to increase the age from which the right to a full pension benefit comes from 65 to 67 years – there is no possibility to support the elderly. Wages are not rising, but unemployment is rising, which has reached the maximum level since the beginning of the century, 75% tax on annual income over a million euros is coming, young people and entrepreneurs are fleeing the country.
Spain has a budget deficit of about 10% of GDP. Salaries of civil servants were cut by 5%, and will be frozen in the future. In the UK, at the end of October 2014, the Prime Minister presented a plan that includes reducing social guarantees, raising the retirement age to 66 years.
“How is it, – the researchers D. Heath and E. Potter are perplexed, – we are able to produce so much wealth and at the same time can not provide any noticeable improvement in the lives of people? We constantly hear that as a society we can no longer afford free medicine and free education. But if we cannot afford it now, how could we have enjoyed these benefits thirty years ago, when the country was producing half as much? Where does the money go?”(See para. D. Heath and E. Potter “Revolt on sale: how counterculture creates a new culture of consumption.” M., 2007)
I see where. In a phenomenon which is N. Greenwich (a Republican and the candidate in presidents of the USA) clearly identified as “crony capitalism.” That is, the money of the society, which still can not help, is spent by the rich to save each other, not the country. L. Turou, author of the book “the Future of capitalism”, published in the United States in 1997, notes that in the 1980s 64% of wage growth accounted for only 1% of employees, that is, top managers. The average earnings of the managers of the five hundred largest us companies at that time increased from an average of 35 to 157 salaries of the average worker.
In the August issue of “Expert” (2011) stated that “…According to a study conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of technology and the Federal reserve, since the 1970s, the incomes of corporate executives with inflation increased by 4 times, while the earnings of 90% of Americans have not changed. In 1970, the salary of the head of the Corporation was 28 times higher than the salary of an ordinary employee, and by 2005 this ratio had increased to 158 times. In the historical perspective, the United States returned to the situation of the 1920s.”
In order to avoid discontent, the West quickly brings the base under the “genetic poverty” (already the term is) – you can see at least N. Grace “Grace Laws”. With this term explain the genetic predisposition to poverty, to less protested and protruded. Also, it’s easier to keep your circle that way.
What happens as a result?
First of all, there is a split in the elite. The super-rich begin to collapse, to create a narrow circle of “their”, which strictly observes the boundaries. That is, there is a “elite elite”, which increases the intra-species struggle and which has to withstand the attacks of the elite, which is smaller, but very numerous.
In addition, with regard to Russia, but now comes the time when the old generation of elites that grew out of the Soviet apparatchiks and Komsomol leaders, successfully convertirovali his hypocritical ideology in the banking accounts starts to wane. They are replaced by people from the millennial generation, who are not set up to preserve, accumulate and wait carefully (that is, to have a stable past, which they do not have – they were born and grew up in the 1990s), but to invest, spend and risk (that is, to have a crisis future). This generation is not, in the words of General Charnoty, “lights in the rear,” which is not true of the apparatchiks, that is, morally they win, that is, they have something to present to the older generation.
Go further. Another problem – embarked on the path of accumulation “elite”, ceases, in fact, to differ from the townsfolk, who also only accumulate and sit out. In addition, the accumulating, not risking elite ceases to be the elite. The elite are those who give guarantees, without having for themselves any guarantees. That is, those who are not afraid to take risks. The elite are also those who know how to find a way out of hopeless situations and point this way out to others. Today, the world elite openly demonstrates its confusion from misunderstanding of what is happening and thus frees up space for any new person who thinks outside the box and does not believe that money decides everything.
And this confusion arises not only because what is happening is happening. The world elite does not understand the main thing – how to make the amount of money was proportional to the amount of happiness. Already 15 years ago, Western sociologists and economists came to the conclusion that when the gross domestic product reaches about $ 10,000 per capita, further economic growth does not lead to an increase in the average level of life satisfaction.
Not only that, in recent years there is a clear tendency to fall satisfaction from life. In a well-organized scheme there was an unexpected detail – the increase in the number of material goods was directly proportional to the amount of time and effort spent on their receipt, the constant fear of falling behind the fashion and from time gave rise to an increasing number of stresses.
And if we consider that the increase in needs and their satisfaction inevitably increased unemployment, eliminated job security, deepened social inequality and disfigured the environment, then, in the end, dissatisfied with life in society has become no less than satisfied, which inevitably raises the question of the effectiveness of the former system. And if you imagine the gap between the amount of $ 10,000 and the amount of $ 70 billion, and then remember that the level of satisfaction with life and there is the same…
Psychological catastrophe and questions “what is the meaning of life?”and “is there a God?» imminent.
A serious threat to the elite is the new life philosophy of the Millennials. In the system of this philosophy, for the first time in a century, money does not come first, and in General, trust in capitalism is rapidly collapsing, because it is undemocratic and unfair. It is no coincidence that the bestselling present day – book of the French economist T. Piketty, “Capital in the twenty-first century” holds the main idea is that inequality is a necessary but not a normal feature of capitalism, and if you do not intervene, the state, capitalism will destroy democracy first, and then the society.
Young people today are increasingly seeking not to buy and rent real estate. Not accidentally it is the West is already beginning to call “generation of renters”. This is due to the fact that the concept of “success” in the modern young man is no longer associated with their own housing, a prestigious car, luxury, a large Bank account – that is, what was the measure of success before.
Now those who successfully collect experience and impressions, but not money are considered successful. Travelers, adventurers, startups. In addition, prosperity and stability largely deprive a person of internal freedom and independence in decision-making and movement. Today, “anthropotok” is already a billion people, that is, about one in seven inhabitants of the planet is constantly moving around the world.
In conditions of constant movement around the world, a constant change of work (today, according to Forbes magazine, young Americans change jobs on average every three years and then, obviously, these figures will only grow), which is becoming so large that we can talk about the “second resettlement of peoples”, real estate, expensive things, etc. bring a person a lot of concern, and they can not be taken with them.
The place of the aristocracy trying to take the elite fattened loan sharks and gangsters
As a result of all these (and not only these) things, what happens happens. The elite stopped making key decisions. More and more often we hear “we can not change anything, we have to follow the progress”. Moreover, the disappearance from the system of world relations of diplomacy, law, religion, in the place of which comes violence and only violence, show that the elite, weakening, excluded from its use democracy, means of persuasion, real competition, wanting to delay its own collapse at any, the most expensive price.
