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The Real Class War

americanaffairsjournal.org

41–50 of 634 posts

Re: The Real Class War

#41
post #24

What a fantastic article; this might be the high point for my 2019 Hacker News reading. What clarity of vision. It is remarkable reflecting after an article like that on the complete inability of the US political system to organise itself to reward work done rather than access to the super-elite social circles. I'd love to know if this Julius fellow has a take on what mechanisms the 0.1% are using to drive the growin…

> political system to organise itself to reward work done How do you decide which work is valuable and which work isn’t?

> How do you decide which work is valuable and which work isn’t?

By viewing the profits generated. As profits are nothing more than unpaid wages.

Re: The Real Class War

#42
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there something patronizing, even patrician, about saying "the propaganda machine has so effectively manipulated the working class"? Why aren't their views as legit as yours or mine? There seems to me a great assumption in saying that they are "manipulated". Who isn't? This is the idea of false consciousness ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consciousness ), and it has always seemed questionable to me. Who…

> Why aren't their views as legit as yours or mine? Could it not be argued that the legitimacy of views depends on how much information the person has access to? The average working-class person, due to lack of free time and interest may be unable to acquire more information than is conveniently delivered to them through a handful of sources, and if those sources are controlled by certain actors and not balanced by o…

That's a good argument, but let me continue the other side: I wonder if this doesn't just repeat the question. Who are we to say that the information we have is the true information? At least on the internet, we all select the information we want. I listen to my preferred sources, and I bet you listen to yours. Why are the working class doing something less legitimate if they do the same?

Re: The Real Class War

#44
post #24

What a fantastic article; this might be the high point for my 2019 Hacker News reading. What clarity of vision. It is remarkable reflecting after an article like that on the complete inability of the US political system to organise itself to reward work done rather than access to the super-elite social circles. I'd love to know if this Julius fellow has a take on what mechanisms the 0.1% are using to drive the growin…

> political system to organise itself to reward work done How do you decide which work is valuable and which work isn’t?

By giving out massively bloated defense contracts and subsidies to agri-corps.

Re: The Real Class War

#45
post #24

What a fantastic article; this might be the high point for my 2019 Hacker News reading. What clarity of vision. It is remarkable reflecting after an article like that on the complete inability of the US political system to organise itself to reward work done rather than access to the super-elite social circles. I'd love to know if this Julius fellow has a take on what mechanisms the 0.1% are using to drive the growin…

> political system to organise itself to reward work done How do you decide which work is valuable and which work isn’t?

Not OP, but my personal belief is that all work is valuable, otherwise it wouldn't be desired. I don't think it's a good exercise to decide how much it is worth, except to say that work that requires X unit of time should provide at a minimum an amount of compensation that allows a person to obtain a standard of living above the poverty line.

Re: The Real Class War

#46
post #9
post #3

> "What is remarkable about today’s oligarchy is not its ruthlessness but its pettiness and purposelessness." yup. the 0.1% is really good at hoarding capital, but to what end? none, apparently. a startlingly coherent summary and critique of the many socioeconomic ills that we tend to discuss opportunistically here. we non-0.1-percenters need to hone in on undoing the systemic changes since the 70's that has led to t…

Honestly, this is what gets me. Say what you will about the man, but few people complain that Elon Musk is a billionaire because clearly he's repeatedly investing his wealth in actually trying to advance humanity in meaningful ways. Similar story with Bill Gates and his foundation. But wtf is the average billionaire (of which there are thousands) or hundred-millionaire (of which there are tens of thousands) doing wit…

Bill Gates also used his wealth to advance the interests of one of the country's most notorious sex traffickers.

There's no reason for _anyone_ to have that much money, or individual influence over public policy.

Re: The Real Class War

#47
post #28

Amusing - it's immediately obvious that Harvard's political philosophy degrees, or at least Julius Krein's, seem to be given out based on word count and not much to do with political philosophy. It's regrettable to see an Ivy League education wasted on a man that would go on to declare himself an alt-right nationalist, and start his own 'zine to provide his readership his own shallow intellectual veneer over their bi…

Just as an additional data point to the conversation, I didn’t know who the author was (I don’t live in the States) and I think this was my first time visiting the website on which the article was published, and as such I thought the author was more on the left of the political spectrum.

I didn't know who he was either, and regardless it's possible for him to be both alt-right and on the mark in this article (although I assume that I had a similar response to you, I was a little disconcerted to see him described as alt-right).

In my limited experience huge swathes of the so-called alt right are, regardless of their other political positions, just as dismal about their economic future as the young left, and they have no illusions about concentration of capital, etc, since the 80s and have drawn similar conclusions.

Re: The Real Class War

#48
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there something patronizing, even patrician, about saying "the propaganda machine has so effectively manipulated the working class"? Why aren't their views as legit as yours or mine? There seems to me a great assumption in saying that they are "manipulated". Who isn't? This is the idea of false consciousness ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consciousness ), and it has always seemed questionable to me. Who…

> Why aren't their views as legit as yours or mine? Could it not be argued that the legitimacy of views depends on how much information the person has access to? The average working-class person, due to lack of free time and interest may be unable to acquire more information than is conveniently delivered to them through a handful of sources, and if those sources are controlled by certain actors and not balanced by o…

The average working class person knows more than you think.

They probably don't have a lot of time for abstract theory, but they do have experience dealing with the government. They've seen how broken their local public schools, VA care, and Medicare are. They've been overwhelmed and overborne by the complicated rules of government programs, and faced harsh penalties for slight missteps.

They also know that Democratic programs generally exclude them because by working for slightly more than minimum wage they earn too much to qualify. And they usually know people receiving government benefits, and they see the lifestyle these benefits impose, and they don't want that for themselves.

Re: The Real Class War

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you believe Krein is recuiting for?

[flagged]

It looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle, which is against the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), and we ban accounts that do it. The flamewar style doesn't lead to interesting internet discussions, it leads to boring and nasty ones, so please don't do it here.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Re: The Real Class War

#50
post #5

I disagree that the working class is not going to radicalize itself. They too are out here on the internet, talking to each other and culturally evolving at an unprecedented rate, like everyone else. For the first time they have the power to publish and think in public uncoupled from professional barrier. Better believe it’s being used, and that they will assert their awareness.

I think that's evident in the Bernie Sanders movement (and to a lesser extent, Warren). Folks like myself support him even though we're some sort of "upper middle class" or some form of middle-merchant class. Not owners, not truly capitalist/investment class, but solidly aligned with everyone else who also has to show up at 9AM daily to get their checks.

This more affluent middle class of information workers are leading the rest of the folks who punch a clock for a living to a better life. It's not everyone though, there's older folks who are fully committed to a dog eat dog existence, because it worked out easily and well for anyone willing to even try their hand in the post-WW2 era. It's understandable that they don't see the connection between relatively easy prosperity, and destroying all of your industrial competitors. Some of the younger conservatives don't have the life experience of being exploited and tossed out to form well-informed views on labor, and are often afraid of challenging their tribe's view, with their fathers often being the aforementioned Boomer. Then you lose another chunk from those who are not very capable, but inherited wealth. Insecurity that they couldn't duplicate their position in life from scratch leads to extremely anti-social behaviors that we see from the capitalist class.

Claiming some defectors from each of those groups, add in the blue collars who know the score, and add in the "Bernie Sanders" educated folk and I definitely am seeing more support for the movement in American society today than I do for any other grassroots movement. Judging from the strength of support of someone like Sanders, the only competent base of support that rivals it is Trump's. It may not be tomorrow or next year when it succeeds, but we're definitely seeing what you're describing and I suspect it'll continue to build until big money can't stop it any longer.

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