The Madding Crowd Is Maddening

From black knighthood the nobles came, and to black knighthood the nobles returned when times got tough. And times always get tough when institutions get stiff in the joints and self-righteous about their position. Bad luck if the Church is the only thing to turn to for succor because the same thing has happened. Priests and prelates reach the point where they think the Church is THEIRS and is a career track, even their personal property.

The business model of banking is the tapeworm. It took an epochal crisis to reorganize society into a pluralistic one consisting of so many power blocs that no single one was able to dominate the economy. But attrition and amalgamation put banking back in charge again because, again, society forgot about entropy.
To let any one bloc run the economy is to run it into the ground.
My wife complained that we weren't living like the characters in Friends. If my peers are full-blown batshit crazy, then social validation is a form of condemnation. Friends might be good in a pinch, but there's a line not crossed by members of a business society.
I remember the speech Britannicus gave his uncle when he rejected the plan to bring the Republic back. "Nobody wants the Republic back. You're old and out of touch." The Empire's subsequent longevity ought to amaze people. But it was a zombie

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