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Warbling J Turpitude's avatar

Could you perhaps expand on how you understand the difference between a broker and a mediator? An attempt to recall same scooped this much off the top of the internet deck. "The mediator topology is commonly used when you need to orchestrate multiple steps within an event through a central mediator, whereas the broker topology is used when you want to chain events and responses together directly without the need for a mediator" (Not sure why they employ 'topology") This explanation does not "hold much water" for me when i try to apply it to an image of say, El Trumpo at large in the geopolitical field..

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true's avatar

"What doesn't fit this model is the more ritual distribution of largesse as patronage. Which is most of what contemporary governments do."

Yet the patronage networks can't work without decisions about who will and will not be included in them, or in an age of people using social media to monetize various performances, the patronage networks must involve themselves (government agents getting jobs or clients in the social media companies, telling banks to close accounts) in cancelling or green lighting.

"with the decline in contemporary state forms (which will decline or be dramatically transformed) venues for receiving "wise" judgment regarding those disputes will be in demand - the juridical will be found to be irreducible, again and again, with each new technoscientific articulation of pedagogical platforms... I would hypothesize the emergence and perhaps continual re-emergence of a centralized data security firm that attains a temporary monopoly on treating data for purposes of judgment."

What I find so notable today (of course I'm not alone) is the complete lack of any official judgment on the data, alleged, denied, by (unofficial) accounts on X, etc., concerning excess mortality in the wake of the Covid "vaccines", despite an obvious interest among, i think, a not insignificant section of the public, and no doubt among those tending to be better informed and hence minimally powerful. (X keeps feeding me my local health authority’s ads to get "information" about the new vaccine whenever I visit dissident accounts, so obviously this "debate" is recognized on some level.) There are a few dozen dissidents on X presuming to present such data and related information; there seems to be some confirmation from insurance and funeral businesses, but no claims from these industries to know why. There was a very brief "debate" in the British Parliament where the junior government minister acknowledged the phenomenon of excess deaths but attributed it to causes non-vaccine. I think in Canada any governmental judgment on this can't happen anytime soon, if there is any reasonable governmental doubt about the "vaccines" because one aspect of the vaccine rollouts was that those people recognized as "indigenous" were put first in line (one doctor in rural BC, with indigenous patients, said in the early days of the vaccine that it was harming and killing some of his patients and he was suspended by the health authority and he is still being investigated by his licensing College) and it is these people, in a classic high low vs middle, who are at the symbolic apex of the present patronage system, not to mention all those whose professional positions have demanded they toe the line. Or perhaps the real apex of the patronage system are the pharma companies (the highly capitalized "healthcare" system in general) who were protected from competition with any cheap therapies (the scapegoating of drugs like ivermectin, the ignoring of humble Vitamin D) that could undo the huge investments in the new vaccine and other technologies.

Inasmuch as any patronage system necessarily includes decisions about who is what, then your model applies there as well. And yet I sense why you wanted to make this distinction between patronage and "declining" state forms: power must have more to do with deferral than consumption (or sabotage?) in the long run. But then why is this not more obvious to people generally, not least to those who sabotage endlessly in their quests to maintain positions high up the food chain at a time of "elite" overproduction? Those who desire "power" are undermining the traditional state and advancing the day when a "private" data security firm does provide those who need to know with the real data on "vaccines", etc. OK, so they only care about the short term. Is this simply the age-old way of hubris?

Anyway, I don't quite see how any "private" data security firm will avoid being captured and made into a "public" sacrifice. This may be why you talk of a "continual re-emergence" of such firms. So I still wonder if there is something to add to the model, if we can simply maintain that power is not really about consumption... The pyramid of skulls and bones wants to know!

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