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The Real Class War

americanaffairsjournal.org

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Re: The Real Class War

#431

Post by 3pt14159 »

roenxi wrote: 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…

If your country has a broken political system then it's unremarkable that it's unable to to organise itself. The forces that shape economic decisions come to shape political decisions too.

Re: The Real Class War

#432

Post by Aperocky »

viburnum wrote: post #258
tvanantwerp wrote: post #159

I've spent my career working in public policy circles, and this rings true to me. > At most, working-class voters can cast their ballots for an “un­acceptable” candidate, but they can exercise no influence on policy formation or agency personnel, much less on governance areas that have been transferred to technocratic bodies. > Unlike the work­ing class, the professional managerial class is still capable of, and re­q…

Gay people can get married in America, which was completely unthinkable a generation ago. 100% due to activists, many who risked their lives to make it happen.

I think a good litmus test for a political issue to gain brownie points on is this: Does it affect the politician, themselves?

If a politician is straight, what does two gay persons marrying have to do with him? It’s thus a brownie point issue, same goes with pot.

Once it start affecting their bottom line, i.e. there’s money involved, watch them and the media skirt around the issue carefully.

Re: The Real Class War

#433

Post by ridewinter »

lbacaj wrote: post #392

Reading this thing is an incredible downer and it makes everything sound black and white. It is literally poo-pooing on everything. Life is never this black and white, although the thesis make for a good read it is still an inaccurate model of the real world. > Moreover, increasing numbers of engineers, even at the most prestigious companies, are hired on temporary contracts. When the artificial growth model stalls,…

This article is what Karl Popper would call historicism — the idea that history has fixed laws or trends that inevitably lead to certain outcomes.

Here's an article on why he considered it false and even dangerous: https://fs.blog/2016/03/karl-popper-mistake-of-historicism/

Re: The Real Class War

#434

Post by maerF0x0 »

TomMckenny wrote: post #52

It makes sense that the top 10% to 2% become more active as blame and anger are re-routed toward them. For example, many people think the "elite" are the educated but not necessarily the wealthy. So for many, adjunct faculty are called "elites" while the Koch brothers are not. Likewise, discussions of wealth inequality are becoming conflated with income inequality. Yet the professional class has only marginal voting…

I've often suggested this to the chagrin of relatively equally wealthy people (people earning 0.5-2x what I earn) . We're all living the same life, just with different levels of shiny.

One drives a used corolla, the other a new one, the 3rd a lexus (made by toyota still). Each has a house with varying levels of pretty etc.

The 0.01% is living in an existence far removed from us. They dont play games of wondering which car has the lowest TCO or signals a little status etc. Instead they're playing power games and games of access to things that go beyond the ability to pay for them.

Re: The Real Class War

#435

Post by TurkishPoptart »

woodpanel wrote: post #295

The whole talk is worth watching, but I'll just point to Lionel Shriver's segment, where she beautifully sums up, what most people – especially in the underclass – know already: https://youtu.be/ddBKQIomyYI?t=2200 Today's western progressivism is taken hostage by the elite. Disturbing as it is for itself, it is even more freightening what this might lead to. What happens if the bottom 50% effectively looses any polit…

You can see this beginning in roughly 2011 when the Occupy Wallstreet protests start to fracture. This was when Starbucks began advocating for anti-racist policy (why? they make money selling permutations of coffee and milk) and a bunch of other corporations chimed in. The 99% movement quickly splintered off into anti-racist memes and whirled into Third Wave Feminism + needs for "inclusion" and "intersectionality" and whatever terms the Wallstreet-backed Left felt best to appease the working poor and working lower-middle class of academics and journalists (who are basically working poor now, but would not like to admit it).

So when you say: >Today's western progressivism is taken hostage by the elite.

I agree. In fact, there is likely evidence that it was manufactured by the elite. This discussion is heading to the territory of Hypernormalisation[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS_c2qqA-6Y], a film I recommend.

Re: The Real Class War

#436

Post by Aperocky »

SchoolboyBlue wrote: post #408

> The company I now work for started as a parking app. . . . We were growing sustainably as the result of having a superior product based on a great understanding of consumer needs. > But sustainable growth isn’t what VCs (or the execs that they install in the firms they have stakes in) are looking for. So we pivoted. > Without going into too much detail, we are now exclusively focused on getting acquired by a big te…

As someone who works at those very companies, I have to say that the code itself isn’t worth that much - everything that’s not a utility package will definitely get rebuilt. Nor is the idea, the only value proposition is existing customers and potential patents for software startups.

Re: The Real Class War

#437

Post by aazaa »

> But it is precisely for these reasons that the working class is unlikely to be decisive in shaping politics for the foreseeable future. ...

This seems like an odd statement given that the American system of government was designed from its inception to insulate the ruling elites from the masses. The founders were terrified of mob rule. The term "democracy" was used at the time to mean something not far away from "mob rule."

The people don't directly elect the president, the Electoral College does that. The people don't vote on any pending legislation. The House and Senate do that. The people don't set foreign policy - the executive and legislative branches do that. The people don't strike down any legislation - the courts do that, members of which at the top level are appointed for life. The full legislature is never up for re-election specifically to prevent a popular uprising.

One wonders what the article has in mind here. The answer comes shortly:

> ... In countries like France, the working class might still be able to veto certain policies through public demonstrations, but such actions seem unlikely in the United States, and even the most heroic efforts of this kind show little prospect of achieving systemic reforms.

Even in France, that's an extra-governmental action. There's no mechanism to include popular dissent except for routinely scheduled elections in either France or the US.

What's more troubling though is the ubiquitous disengagement from the parts of American government through which people can effect (small) changes:

- jury duty

- elections

Re: The Real Class War

#438

Post by tathougies »

theohofpleasure wrote: post #357
_carl_jung wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a philosophical leap about rightful ownership when you say "unpaid wages". I don't agree with that leap. Further, your definition doesn't include situations in which there is no employee (such as the one I gave). It is more correct to say that the profit is the gains made to some agent in a market transaction.

I don't entirely agree either. I was just expanding on the idea. However, when there is no employee, such as in the example you gave, there is also no profit. What you have called profit is actually your wage. Do I make a profit when I go to work for a company? No, I earn a wage.

You can easily think of your wage minus your yearly expenditures as your profit, which, if you're doing things right, should be positive.

Re: The Real Class War

#439

Post by kaycebasques »

dang wrote: post #355
kazagistar wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the idea behind this is what? That you shouldn't trust the revolutionaries because they dont have your interests in mind? That its hopeless? This model of the world is just run of the mill statusquoism trying to make people too despondent to tear down hierarchy, not some deep truth. To be honest I dont know if Orwell agreed with the position of the high or not, but the fact people repeat this propaganda of the "hi…

Orwell's biography is so famous that we can guess the basics of how he would answer this: revolutionaries don't necessarily have your interests in mind; it's not hopeless; oppose the status quo; don't be blinded by ideology; be honest before being political.

Which biography are you referring to? I’m seeing a few. I didn’t know it was famous and never thought to check, but would definitely like to read now that you mention it.

P.S. it’s always a treat to stumble on a non-moderator comment from dang

Re: The Real Class War

#440

Post by kaycebasques »

shigawire wrote: post #338
kazagistar wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the idea behind this is what? That you shouldn't trust the revolutionaries because they dont have your interests in mind? That its hopeless? This model of the world is just run of the mill statusquoism trying to make people too despondent to tear down hierarchy, not some deep truth. To be honest I dont know if Orwell agreed with the position of the high or not, but the fact people repeat this propaganda of the "hi…

Alternatively it can be seen as a lesson for the low to not allow the middle to use them as a weapon. If they want to avoid this same result they'd need to take over their own revolution, not be led by the middle.

> for the low to not allow the middle to use them

By Orwell’s definition you can’t depend on The Low to defend themselves

> The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives

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