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Is everything falling apart?

nonzero.substack.com

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Re: Is everything falling apart?

#51
Answer: Maybe.

What we are experiencing is acceleration. Left-wing accelerationists want to bring on capitalism's end-stage calamities in order to foster a revolution that will overthrow the bourgeoisie. Right-wing accelerationists think that worsening economic conditions will trigger some sort of white-nationalist boogaloo garbage. I'm not an accelerationist, for my part, but it's pretty clear to me that acceleration is happening. Capitalism has been in objective decline for decades, but now the decline is happening faster than most of us ever imagined.

There's an inevitable sequence to this sort of thing. Capitalism becomes corporate capitalism ("Stage 2") due to business consolidation. This requires the proliferation of middle management positions, both to curtail inefficiency and to prop up a middle class (preventing overthrow) while small businesses die, so what you get is an evolution into managerial capitalism. ("Stage 3") At this point, bureaucratic diversions make it hard to know what is happening, and few people--least of all the overpaid boneheads on top, who can't tell when they're being lied to--know if their managers (or consultants) are any good, so this leads to reputation capitalism ("Stage 4") in which there is no such thing as truth--there is only what people say, and power resides in the ability to control what others say. (In other words, might makes right.) This leads to widespread, deliberate misinformation that proliferates; the system begins to shake, but the nature of post-truth capitalism ("Stage 5") allows it to preserve its own stability, for a little while longer, if it can convince a large number of people that they're either already winning (bourgeois false consciousness) or destined to win (fascist fuckery). This isn't hard at all, in a world where nothing means anything, and in which the convincing telling of lies is the surest path to prestigious jobs and high incomes.

We now live in a world where having a national reputation is necessary just to get an average job--hence the pathological obsession of the young with fame and "influencers"-- and in which admission to the most prestigious universities is as competitive as it has ever been but the product is the worst it's ever been. We have the right wing using fascism to win; we have the left wing diverted into callout-culture identity politics and virtue signaling instead of actual change. The dysfunction of capitalism can no longer be contained. We have stagflation now and will see worldwide food riots in a year or two. Read up on the Russian 1990s if you want to know what the capitalistic world (which is now the entire world) is in for.

Is everything falling apart? It's hard to say. It'll get a lot worse in the short term, but humans and human civilization are resilient.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nations rise. ... Sometimes there's peace. In short: sometimes things aren't falling apart. For a few decades we enjoyed one of the great periods of peace and prosperity. That was surely doomed to end eventually, but I wish it could last a while longer.

It's an endless cycle. As the saying goes... Hard times make strong men Strong men make good times Good times make weak men And weak men make hard times.

"Strong men" make fascism, not good times.

It's pretty much the definition of fascism - a delusional paternalistic idiot infecting everyone around him with his own neuroses and narcissism, in the name of "patriotism" and "respect."

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#54
post #8

The constant theme since the dawn of civilization threaded through all of history is that everything is falling apart. Change is continual. History is more like the seasons. Nations rise. Nations fall. Sometimes there's revolt. Sometimes there's peace. There's a continual game of King of the Mountain being played at all levels. So what can we say? Situation Normal - all effed up! Enjoy this phenomenon called life. Yo…

Every generation thinks the world is ending but eventually one will be correct.

Eventually one will cause it (at least, our world).

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nations rise. ... Sometimes there's peace. In short: sometimes things aren't falling apart. For a few decades we enjoyed one of the great periods of peace and prosperity. That was surely doomed to end eventually, but I wish it could last a while longer.

It's an endless cycle. As the saying goes... Hard times make strong men Strong men make good times Good times make weak men And weak men make hard times.

this saying is often used to demean men that don't fit a very narrow definition of "strong"

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you can just wait for the next stop and get on there.

How do you get to the next stop?

You wait for the market to cycle again - crash, boom, then crash, etc. Parent poster might have been in their 20s/30s though and implying that waiting for the next cycle would waste prime years of their life.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#58
I think if the debate is "everything is pretty bad" vs "everything is kinda bad, but..." then it's not going to go anywhere.

I wish that Wright had focused more on Haidt's concrete suggestions in his article. For example, towards the end of his article, Haidt writes,

"Reforms should reduce the outsize influence of angry extremists and make legislators more responsive to the average voter in their district. One example of such a reform is to end closed party primaries, replacing them with a single, nonpartisan, open primary from which the top several candidates advance to a general election that also uses ranked-choice voting. A version of this voting system has already been implemented in Alaska, and it seems to have given Senator Lisa Murkowski more latitude to oppose former President Trump, whose favored candidate would be a threat to Murkowski in a closed Republican primary but is not in an open one."

And that's an idea that may have pros and cons! But it focuses the debate on specific proposals to improve the situation, rather than just a general referendum on "How Bad Are Things?"

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#60
post #34

This is a bit of an oversimplification of the argument. Technology is argued to be a wedge, but this is in the context of well documented social division. In recent memory we were significantly less divided and the most consumed media sources served as moderators. Brushing this off as just another prognostication and everything is always messed up is missing the seriousness of this. It is perhaps fortunate that the U…

> Perhaps the next external threat will be carbon climate cancer?

Americans rarely unite against something that's partially and/or possibly our fault.

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