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Unnecessariat

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Re: Unnecessariat

#61

Post by [deleted] »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #41
jraines wrote: post #24

I'm reminded of Jimmy Carter's "Malaise" speech: The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the fut…

You were right until your last sentence. Reagan made the nation feel that its civic and moral fabric was strong. Nevermind that his policies undermined civil society and his religious backing was hypocritical of anything close to Christ's teachings on compassion, it made people feel strong and so it won him the election.

[deleted]

Re: Unnecessariat

#63

Post by drumdance »

aston wrote: post #18
dragonwriter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why didn't they all vote for Obamacare and for the public option In substantial quantities, they did. That's what Obama in the general election (and with slight variations, he, Clinton and Edwards in the Democratic primaries) campaigned on. But they didn't get it, because by the time the health care bill got through Congress it had no public option, because while it was in the version passed by the House, it was ki…

And who elected those filibuster-threatening senators? Were the senators acting of their own accord, or on behalf of their constituents' desires?

The Senate is ridiculously undemocratic. Because every state gets two senators regardless of population, a vote by a Wyoming resident is worth 65 Californian votes.

Re: Unnecessariat

#64

Post by unimpressive »

clock_tower wrote: post #43
CodeMage wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there's no followup discussion. The fact that software engineering is "destroying jobs" is the wrong problem to focus on, but any discussion that approaches the right problem -- capitalism -- is practically taboo in United States.

Indeed. The world needs to return to feudalism (EDIT: it looks like I said "feudalism" and meant "the current economic model of Europe"...), with elites -- who are more or less permanent and hereditary even in capitalism -- having, and believing and accepting that they do have, clearly-defined obligations towards the common people and towards the collective defense of the realm. Of course, there'll always be room for…

Serfdom was an economic system that was predicated on the economic value of peasants. The entire problem is that the peasants are no longer valuable, they drain wealth rather than generate it.

Re: Unnecessariat

#65

Post by mac01021 »

clock_tower wrote: post #43
CodeMage wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there's no followup discussion. The fact that software engineering is "destroying jobs" is the wrong problem to focus on, but any discussion that approaches the right problem -- capitalism -- is practically taboo in United States.

Indeed. The world needs to return to feudalism (EDIT: it looks like I said "feudalism" and meant "the current economic model of Europe"...), with elites -- who are more or less permanent and hereditary even in capitalism -- having, and believing and accepting that they do have, clearly-defined obligations towards the common people and towards the collective defense of the realm. Of course, there'll always be room for…

> The world needs to return to feudalism

Traditionally feudal lords have aimed mostly spend the minimal amount possible on welfare for their serfs - staving off social unrest but keeping for themselves as much as possible of the GDP subject to that constraint. Are you suggesting that neofeudalism will somehow do better in this respect? Or simply that that would be better than what we have now?

> is less likely to turn lawless

What's meant by this? It might true in the tautological sense that the despot acts within the law by definition, whatever he does. But I sense that's not what you mean.

Re: Unnecessariat

#66

Post by tunesmith »

clock_tower wrote: post #43
CodeMage wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there's no followup discussion. The fact that software engineering is "destroying jobs" is the wrong problem to focus on, but any discussion that approaches the right problem -- capitalism -- is practically taboo in United States.

Indeed. The world needs to return to feudalism (EDIT: it looks like I said "feudalism" and meant "the current economic model of Europe"...), with elites -- who are more or less permanent and hereditary even in capitalism -- having, and believing and accepting that they do have, clearly-defined obligations towards the common people and towards the collective defense of the realm. Of course, there'll always be room for…

That's neoreactionary moldbuggery. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater - we can't figure out how to help people in the midwest, so let's make them serfs.

Re: Unnecessariat

#67

Post by clock_tower »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #53
clock_tower wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly hadn't thought about Europe that way, but I always did know that I liked the cut of their jib. Hearing this is both heartening and depressing: heartening because a neo-feudal system already exists; depressing because it's precisely the neo-feudal part of the world that has a neo-fascism problem...

India and China aren't too far behind. The former enables religious extremism and the latter hammers public opinion into a blind acceptance of the solitary ruling party. Here's what should concern you more: the 20th century was the age of strong states, from the active citizenry of the imperial United States, to the Communist dominance of society in the equally imperial Soviet Union. The 21st century is the age of th…

Very good points.

My instinctive rejoinder to "the age of the corporation" is to ask how many bayonets the corporation has, but the answer is increasingly "not zero."

This also causes me to notice something else: what if neo-fascism and its Asian counterparts are becoming popular precisely as a way to coerce corporations -- because nothing less than that can bring them under control?

This sounds very plausible, and it's not a pleasant thought. You'd think that the international business class would know what _noblesse oblige_ means, and would realize that they need to not antagonize the planet, but that would be giving them more credit than they deserve; I've read books that casually, in passing, praise the merits of tax havens and condemn all social-welfare programs...

Re: Unnecessariat

#68

Post by clock_tower »

tunesmith wrote: post #66
clock_tower wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. The world needs to return to feudalism (EDIT: it looks like I said "feudalism" and meant "the current economic model of Europe"...), with elites -- who are more or less permanent and hereditary even in capitalism -- having, and believing and accepting that they do have, clearly-defined obligations towards the common people and towards the collective defense of the realm. Of course, there'll always be room for…

That's neoreactionary moldbuggery. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater - we can't figure out how to help people in the midwest, so let's make them serfs.

Just don't accuse me of being racist or fascist, and you can call me what you like. But note my point about having more social mobility than feudalism 1.0.

(Even back in the Middle Ages, though, serfs had property rights; they were sharecroppers, legally bound to their land but entitled to keep a proportion of their harvests. In the late Middle Ages, the obligation to give their lords a portion of their harvests was turned into the obligation to pay a certain amount of money -- which was not indexed for inflation, with interesting long-term consequences.)

Re: Unnecessariat

#69

Post by roymurdock »

I'm reading two books right now. The Rise and Fall of American Growth [1] by Robert Gordon and The Grapes of Wrath [2] by John Steinbeck. They complement each other, and this post, very well.

I would recommend Gordon's book as an objective overview of the astonishing growth in economic and quality of life terms from 1870-1970. It's not as thoroughly researched as I expected it to be, and the prose is somewhat clunky, but it's a good lesson in the history of technology that we take for granted nonetheless.

Steinbeck's tale of the banks/landowners displacing poor, rural farming families is also extremely pertinent in light of this post. Car dealers extract value from the fleeing, unnecessariat farmers in "Grapes", while insurance companies/debtors prisons extract value from the unnecessariat rural poor chronicled in this post. The promised land of "Grapes" (California) continues to be successful today, with the coasts accreting a large portion of the nation's wealth. It's also just a beautifully written and thoroughly considered (to the point of seeming spontaneous) piece of art.

I am waiting for the next paradigm shifting technology with bated breath.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-American-Growth-Princeton/dp...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Grapes-Wrath-John-Steinbeck/dp/0143039...

Re: Unnecessariat

#70

Post by deciplex »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #59
wildmusings wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indeed. The world needs to return to feudalism, with elites -- who are more or less permanent and hereditary even in capitalism -- having, and believing and accepting that they do have, clearly-defined obligations towards the common people and towards the collective defense of the realm. This post is a good reminder that capitalists are the radical liberal utopians of an earlier age, and what the realistic alternat…

Then again, the prevailing opinion of the 19th century was that "inalienable rights" are so last century and the only true rights that exist are those that can be won from a free market.

That's pretty much the prevailing opinion now, and probably moreso than even during the Gilded Age.
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