Robb: Manufactured Tribes

Read the whole thing at Global Guerrillas, but here's the opener:

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In modern economic depressions, it's likely that economic failure will have a high rate of onset. If so, the result would be widespread and relatively unmitigated economic dislocation (as we have seen, a tightly coupled system can fail both quickly and broadly, faster than governments can respond). Further, this type of failure will naturally result in a delegitimization of government institutions and the revival of primary loyalties -- as in, people will naturally focus their loyalties on family, friends, community, etc that support them during tough times. This is the opportunity space for organizers of resilient communities.

Unfortunately, in many cases a shift to primary loyalties will not be a benign occurrence. They will be assigned to groups that are not only able, but willing to use violence to advance their objectives. As each new violent group forms, it will put pressure on adjoining areas to form violent groups of their own. One question that seems interesting is: how quickly will these violent groups propagate? The answer is very quickly, if we use current gang membership as the starting point...
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Right-minded folks have some significant reorientation to do, as they wrap their brains around concepts such as "resilient communities", "gangs", "tribes", and "lawless wastelands", then start to execute in light of those concepts.

Best to get to it, and a daily glance at Global Guerrillas is a cycle-accelerator towards that goal.

Alea iacta est.