Oh come on. I'm not talking about the Illuminati here, I'm talking about the heads, advisers and important employees of executive departments like HUD, the Treasury, the FED, things like that. If you'd done a little thinking before responding maybe you'd have considered that. Unless you think our society is just entirely unmanaged?
You could perhaps have stated it as politicians and bureaucrats instead of "people", which would have made it more obvious to the reader you meant the government at large.
Aspects of it, absolutely. It's not even a secret, I'm not talking about some secret conspiracy. Social structures are largely a game of incentives, and the government agencies have a pretty powerful toolkit as far as incentives go.
Here's an example, it is openly stated that the government maintains an inflation rate to discourage saving and encourage spending to stimulate the economy. This is a deliberate attempt to influence the culture of the US, and it works. We have a consumer culture where everyone buys services and cheap stuff and nobody saves money, the stated goal of these fiscal policies.
Your claim was that there are people 'manipulating our social structure' and instead of backing up a bold claim you backed off and just made the claim that people don't save enough money. If you don't want people to push back on what you say, don't say hyperbolic nonsense. This is a common pattern people fall into.
They don't say what they mean, they say come bizarre abstract exaggeration to get a reply or reaction, then completely back off from what they originally said, then get mad that they are asked to explain their original claim.
I never said "manipulating" although without the negative connotation of the word it's semantics. And I haven't backed off a single thing.
I didn't claim people don't save enough money. I claimed that it is fiscal policy of our government and has been for decades to stimulate the economy by discouraging saving and encouraging spending via debasement of currency. Discouraging saving and encouraging spending is manipulation of social structure. I fail to see where your disagreement lies in that statement. You did not address my example at all, you just dismissed it entirely. I restated it here to give you an opportunity to correct that if you want.
I can give you more examples of government managing social structure if you like. In some instances the social and cultural impacts are secondary effects, often unintended consequences, but in many cases they're deliberate and openly stated, such as the example I've already given.
What exactly do you think government means when they call themselves "government"? What does it mean to govern a society, population, land mass or nation?
Alright, I can't tell if you're being difficult on purpose or by accident, so I'm going to explain my example very simply, "draw it with crayons" so to speak.
Monetary inflation is planned. there are men, in the US that would be the board of the FED, that try to decide what the inflation rate will be using interest rates to borrow from them. They target certain rates because they want certain social and economic consequences of the conditions they impose.
This is one example. Draw me a picture of how that's not systems planning our social structure.
Now, to answer your question, yes, there are people that do treat our society like a system and do systems planning to attempt to create desired social, cultural and economic outcomes. These people collectively form what is known as government. This is not a matter of contention, it is not a controversial statement, this is literally their stated goal, their mission for existing and what we pay them to do.
Now let me ask you a question: what exactly do you think a government does?
It seems like you are just making a gigantic reach by saying 'money affects everything' so by some sort of hop scotch free association, inflation (the thing you actually seem to care about) affects 'social structure' (the nonsense you are bringing into the discussion because you don't feel listened to)
Inflation was an example, and "the nonsense I'm bringing into the discussion because I don't feel listened to" is the statement I made in the first comment that you replied to that started this thread.
Anyway, unless you're going to reply to a statement I made, answer a question I asked or actually state your disagreement with anything I've said there's not a discussion here to be had.
the statement I made in the first comment that you replied to that started this thread.
I know, but it turns out you are really just upset about inflation. You haven't connected that in any real way to claims of "system planning our social structure".
Who are these people and are they in the room with us now?