This is a blog dedicated to economics, politics, and modern living. It is anchored by the theory in a recently published book titled Juggernaut: Why the System Crushes the Only People Who Can Save It.

The metaphor used , the Juggernaut, a term that has many connotations today, not the least of which is specifically suited for our aims. The legend of the Juggernaut originated during Far East travels of fourteenth-century British explorers, who returned with tales of a grand Hindu procession that drew devotees from hundreds of miles away. At the center of the march was a massive 45-foot chariot car that carried the local religious clerics as well as statues of Jagannath, the Hindu god known later as Krishna. With no little embellishment, the fable described how fanatics would throw themselves under the wheels of the towering structure as it passed in order to display their devotion and attain salvation. The more fanatics that threw themselves before the Juggernaut, the bigger and more powerful it became, making it all the more uncontrollable and unstoppable.

The legend was a mix of folktale and political commentary on the wretched condition of the alleged savages. It is not known whether it also served as criticism of the Western Juggernaut then growing in the form of the Holy Roman Empire. Comparisons are inescapable. Nowadays, the legend serves as an allegory of the condition of our own civilization, the Juggernaut being the system and the zealots being the average citizens who so willfully throw themselves under the crushing, moving monstrosity for the salvation that is the easy life.

The Thesis of Juggernaut

The modern system is based on alternatives. Private property, free enterprise, specialism, industry, cooperation, and all other central aspects of the modern politico-economic system are based in the ability for the participants to reject the system and make do somewhere else. Since the close of the frontier around 1890, those alternatives have become increasingly difficult to secure since it has become increasingly difficult to reject the system and move somewhere else. As a result, growing interdependency has given larger authority to those in power. Those in power are granted wider freedoms in their rule, and everyone else must acquiesce or attempt to gain positions of power to survive. As the close hardens, society sheds its free and democratic characteristics and takes on a more hierarchic or statist appearance. The only way to reverse this trend is to open alternatives by localizing power, denationalizing the economy, and increasing self-sufficiency.