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The Real Class War

americanaffairsjournal.org

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191–200 of 634 posts

Re: The Real Class War

#191

Post by jacobush »

sodafountan wrote: post #172

Virtually every problem listed in this article is solved if bitcoin continues its historic rise - and yet you mention bitcoin on hacker news and you're down-voted to oblivion, it really is unbelievable. The "Elites" are getting richer because capital is being used to accumulate more capital through dividends on stocks and revenue producing assets. The only reason money is being funneled into these assets is because t…

Do you really think the elite would accept any threat to the status quo without a fight? Besides, even if you were to somehow succeed, the scarcity of bitcoin would just be the new elite. Bitcoin ownership is already incredibly concentrated. Meet your new boss, same as old boss.

Re: The Real Class War

#192

Post by aphextim »

larnmar wrote: post #12
kingkawn wrote: 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.

The election of Donald Trump could be seen as the result of the radicalisation of the working class.

I think it's more likely due to the echo chamber of the media/pollsters and big cities who didn't count of all the 'fly over' areas actually coming together.

I remember working a temp job at a polling call center and although I was just doing grunt work of calling people, it was clearly obvious they were doing polls to hear what they wanted. There was only 1 survey out of maybe 200 that was what I would consider unbiased and didn't have any leading questions or pre-picked answers.

You would screen out people in the beginning of the survey that were obviously not interested in whoever candidate you were calling in regards to, and more often than not the survey itself would have leading questions to get the answers they want so they can take the results and be like, "See our Candidate is winning!!!" - yet they only called people and did the survey with those who were already willing to vote for said candidate.

Polls are literally circle jerking people who were voting democrat and those regarding republican candidate were always negative.

It also could be that the particular call center I was working out of only had contracts with Democratic parties/PACS but from my time there it was clear that polls are a racket.

Re: The Real Class War

#193

Post by akhilcacharya »

vonmoltke wrote: post #178
akhilcacharya wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If money won elections Michael Bloomberg would have been president long ago, Mike Bloomberg has won every election he's run in, which is exactly 3 elections. Not the best example.

> If money won elections [Steve Forbes] would have been president long ago, More appropriate example then. You can add Perot to that pile as well.

Better example. Of course, I think Perot could have had a shot if he hadn't dropped out to drop back in. He could have easily have gotten 2nd place or 1st place in more states than UT and ME if he was less impulsive.

Re: The Real Class War

#194

Post by claudiawerner »

theohofpleasure wrote: post #133
_carl_jung wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I invent (at the cost of $500) a programming tool that improves your output by 50%. This enables you to earn $5000 more per year than previously. You purchase that software for $1000, providing me a profit of $500. Who's wages are unpaid?

It's a company which makes the profit. If you started a company and sold the tool for $500 and the company paid you $500 then there is no more profit for the company. If the company paid you $250, only then can they claim to have made $250 profit. Hence, profits are nothing more than unpaid wages.

It should be worth noting that this is a pretty strong (and I don't think defensible in the case given) claim to make - you're echoing the Marxist/socialist objection to profits (one which I may agree with) but Marx (nor anyone else) ever claimed that this happens without employing wage labour. For profits to be nothing more than unpaid wages, we need to be talking about at least one waged worker who applies labour, and his product is appropriated by his employer.

Re: The Real Class War

#195

Post by nine_k »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #145
nine_k wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my book, work has negative utility. It is something you tolerate to get the fruits of it, which may have positive utility. Being paid in exchange for work is the sign that otherwise the work won't be worth doing for you. The less work you do to achieve a desired result, the better. This is why technical improvements are valuable: they allow you do less work. There are activities that are rewarding by themselves, l…

You're describing the utility of work for the worker, and I agree with your description. But work also has utility for the person who pays the worker, and this is extremely different from what you've described. This difference in the utility functions for each party (one wants to maximise the return on work and minimize the work; the other wants to minimize the work and the cost on it) is what sets up most of the "cl…

No, the work done by worker still has a negative utility — it's time spent and salary paid, a clear loss for the employer.

The fruit of the work done is what's valuable, thus is what the employer buys from the worker by paying wages, or a slave owner forcibly takes from a slave. This is why an employer is interested in technical improvements: they reduce the required amount of work per unit of the resulting valuables.

The tension between the worker and the employer is about the price paid for the fruits of the work. Definitely, with standardized industrial manufacturing, it's about the amount of time and work conditions, because a worker can't significantly influence the performance of the machines he's using, or could not at Marx's times. As the Japanese (e.g. Toyota) have shown, workers with right motivation and right education can influence performance of industrial manufacturing quite significantly, e.g. by spotting inefficiencies and by lowering the defect rate.

Re: The Real Class War

#196

Post by dantheman »

_iyig wrote: post #157
dcolkitt wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the people who have captured the gains from that growth have been the capital class in the developed nations (i.e not blue collar workers or the professional class) Wrong. Middle-class Americans have captured gains through cheaper, higher-quality products than would have otherwise existed without trade and development. Are you using a phone made in China, or wearing clothes made in Bangladesh, or eat fresh fruit in…

Maybe so, but nobody's happy about cheap lawn furniture, for example, when they can't afford homes, healthcare, or education.

Interesting that those three industries are the most heavily regulated and manipulated by the government.

Re: The Real Class War

#197

Post by lotsofpulp »

kiterunner2346 wrote: post #175

Could someone write a tl;dr for this article so I can understand his point(s)?

The gap between the haves and have nots that will cause problems is between 0.1% and 90% to 99.9%, rather than the gap between 10% and 90%. I think.

And there is a lot of misallocation of resources as people try to hold onto their percentile, or spend an inordinate amount of resources trying to climb to the next one. I think.

Re: The Real Class War

#198

Post by rapnie »

hnuser77 wrote: post #186
WhompingWindows wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention they were all poisoned by lead, using it for sweeteners, pipes, and for their chalices and cups.

One could consider Americans poisoned by something , considering that 40% of the American population is obese (not just overweight) and sperm count has declined 50% in developed countries over the past few decades.

[flagged]

Re: The Real Class War

#199

Post by teunispeters »

Pigo wrote: post #118
nsporillo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Average voter doesn't care about the merits of competitive advantage. Maybe if the Chinese actually opened their markets up to competition would we see true benefits in the west. The problem of course is preventing the majority of the wealth going straight to the top.

Maybe if China played by the rules, and did something about ip theft...

Ah yes, Europe and button copyrights all over again... (this plays big into USA's history)

Re: The Real Class War

#200

Post by jhallenworld »

Wh1skey wrote: post #165

The story of Rome’s fall is both complicated and relatively straightforward yet it eerily resembles America: The state became too big and chaotic; the influence of money and private interests corrupted public institutions; and social and economic inequalities became so large that citizens lost faith in the system altogether and gradually fell into the arms of tyrants and demagogues. If all of that sounds familiar, we…

One part of it was that times were better when emperors were selected based on ability instead of by heredity.

https://medium.com/@samo.burja/how-roman-emperors-handled-th...

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Five-Good-Emperors

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