[chris-h]

There are 2 kinds of people in industrialized societies.(More kinds do exist but are not discussed here.)

The people that make the decisions (leaders usually business leaders)
The people that produce and consume ( usually called employees)

Very simply . In our civilization most of the real work is done by machines that use oil or other energy forms.

In order for the leaders to continue to lead they must find create jobs for the majority of all people.

Most of the jobs created are really useless
For example
bureaucratic jobs
salesman jobs
services jobs.

All those jobs are really not needed for a society to survive.
They are only needed to help our leader control the people.

For example if ownership of a house , health care , having some social status and feeding yourself depends on having a job you are going to do everything to keep this job.

Most of these jobs need just one thing obedience . If you do exactly what you are told you will generally be ok.
It also help when you getting home tired and your main source of entertainment is usually TV because you do not have the time to do an independent activity because of course you have to do a useful job tomorrow morning . Useful as pushing some paper , taking part in some committee , selling something to a fellow consumer that he had seen yesterday evening in the tv (his entertainment) or providing some services to another person ( usually the services are preferred that do it yourself because of the lack of time maybe because the service is advertised in the tv)

From the moment that you are 5 until maybe 18 you go to school.

There 2 reasons for it. First to prevent you from learning anything useful at all like

cooking ,making or repairing cloths, building a home , learning a trade learning the scientific method or learning anything indeed that is useful.

The second reason is to learn that the world is an aggressive unsocial and competitive world where you cannot trust your peers but you must always respond and obey the voice of authority (teacher,boss, politician,expert,newspapers,tv)

Because school discourages you from learning anything useful most people that come out of school cannot pursue and independent living (Unless of course your parents intervened and taught you a trade)

Now you have to work for someone else usually called a boss.
Now usually most of the jobs that you will do are not really required
(sales,services,bureaucracy) but they are helpful into making obey while the real jobs are done by a few people that operate the machines (with oil)
A machine can usually do the jobs of 20 people in constructing all the goods (or in farming ) and that is why our leaders have to invent those jobs in order to keep control.

So far so good.

We have a paranoid system where few leaders control the machines that make all the real jobs.

The fact that most of the people are really incapable of producing anything at all is really good because it makes them more dependent of the machines and on the great leaders that controls these machines.
Imagine as an example if the Americans really knew how to cook themselves . No need for fast food. OR if the could repair things instead of throwing them away as fast as they could and buying new.
Economy would suffer. Imagine if no tv existed and people were content with what they had . The machines would produce less and the people would be less dependent.



You will now ask : WHY FOR GOD SHAKE DO THE PEOPLE ACCEPT SUCH A SYSTEM ?
Well it is because it works. The machine produce (along with the minorities now called blue collared workers and farmers ) and people can enjoy this great standard of living .

Big cars , big houses , big food , cheap plentiful items in supermarket everything CHEAP , PLENTY & BIG.



However all those machine depend on free energy in order to operate.
Lack of inexpensive energy would mean that the machine could not produce as much.
Then the people would be called to produce something .

Well yes the (bureaucrats , salesman , people in service jobs would be called to produce something) !

But in order to produce something WITHOUT THE MACHINES you got to have real skill.

For example lets example lets examine the skills of a salesperson that sells pc a chain store and why such people are required NOT TO HAVE ANY SKILLS on the jobs or even think.

Somebody is hired in such a chain without knowing anything about pc (If you know anything they will NOT hire you)
Now in 2 weeks MOST they tell you .. these pc are the BEST for this occasion , the other product is BEST for the other occasion and so on. So after 2 weeks they tell you that now you “KNOW EVERYTHINGâ€

[Tyler_JC]

I think you are basically correct about the governments of the world. They were never created to help people, only control them. When the SHTF, I have a feeling that the government will fold up and go away. Each region will become it's own empire. Without advanced weaponry and excess energy, large empires are impossible. Fighting between these groups will continue until one empire is successful in killing everyone else. If that never happens...the world begins to look a lot like Greece around 1000BC. Life is possible, it's just unpleasent.

btw, what happened to spell check and polls?