The Zman has come up with a new way to understand our regime. He calls it “Managerial Polyarchy,” and he explains it thusly:
Managerial Polyarchy refers to the fact that large complex society does not have central control. Instead it has nodes that control specific domains, like banking, the media, the academy, and so on. These are networked together by a common understand of their role in society. This polyarchy of institutions shares the ideology of managerialism, thus we get the term Managerial Polyarchy.
He first introduced the concept on his podcast over a year ago. The idea is that tons of people in responsible positions in our society are managers, and so they tend to think that all problems need to be managed by qualified responsible people — like them. He calls this managerialism, and in this culture the job of the top institutions of society is to control people, and to do this we needed collections of experts. What does tech do? It controls the flow of information. What does Wall Street do? It controls the flow of money. Business? It decides whether it wants to do business in North Carolina or Russis. The media? It exists to impose a moral code on the rest of us. They all add up to “power centers within the American empire.” These power centers do not think about what the people want. They think about what they believe is in the best interests of the subordinate people, they are subconsciously selecting for the kind of people they want out there supervising human relations: how do we use “the power we have to control human behavior.”
Think of modern society as a corporation in a skyscraper. The top managers all get together on the top floor to discuss how to manage all their departments on lower floors.
The problem is that the corporate managers tend to veer off the question of producing the best product at the best price and start managing the social relationships and moral relations between the workers. Just as our managerial polyarchy does.
He notes that even though the managerial polyarchs know that they are the people that ought to rule they know they have a problem.
A society in which the majority is disgruntled but lacks a leader and a method to compel change is like dry leaves and wood in the underbrush of a forest. It is a forest fire waiting to happen. The disgruntled inside the managerial system may look at the disgruntled masses as an army in waiting and decide it is a good time to stage a palace coup.
Yes. I suppose that is the biggest problem our rulers face right now. The majority is disgruntled but it lacks a leader. For now.
Only, of course, the disgruntled do too have a leader. In the US his name is Donald Trump. In the UK his name is Nigel Farage. In France her name is Marine Le Pen.
Which explains why our rulers, ably assisted by the various “domains, like banking, the media, the academy, and so on” are pushing back so hard against the leaders of the “disgruntled.” But,
In the end, government, regardless of form, must not only satisfy the majority, but pacify those unsatisfied so they will not revolt.
This is not that hard. Our rulers need to balance their lordly supervisions against the necessary pacification of the unsatisfied to prevent a revolt. If they do that the leaders of the disgruntled will fade away and everything will be for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
Rather clearly, our western governments are not doing that.