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Is everything falling apart?

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Re: Is everything falling apart?

#371

Post by mikkergp »

incomingpain wrote: post #313
mikkergp wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said if he’s successful, that both the far left and far right would be equally unhappy, has he made any kind of statement to suggest his goal is to “get people back on the same team”? I.E. his goal is to get people to trust the platform, not each other.

>He said if he’s successful, that both the far left and far right would be equally unhappy, has he made any kind of statement to suggest his goal is to “get people back on the same team”? I.E. his goal is to get people to trust the platform, not each other. Basically what he just said is that he won't be allowing violence or calls to violence. When you boil down or remove the perjorativeness of 'extremism'. You can h…

I'm actually curious to push on your idea that "we can all agree that violence isn't the answer". Because I think there are more and more people who think it is the answer. I would guess you're saying the vast majority rather than all (Sorry if this sounds pedantic but it's not meant to be).

Also, is it ok to call for violence if your next tweet says that you were joking? I do not think there is not agreement on what a violent extremist is.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#372

Post by swid »

msla wrote: post #158
zozbot234 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 is utter nonsense. Strong men make bad times, as anyone who's lived under a strongman can tell you, and strongman regimes are extremely weak in terms of human development, technological progress, and military power, as evidenced by the utter failures of North Korea and Nazi Germany and the USSR. Whining about how they did some notable things is missing the point: They couldn't sustain, they had no staying power,…

I mean, even in your own post, you spell strong man different from strongman. Here’s a definition of the word strong for you: “possessing skills and qualities that create a likelihood of success.” Obviously this meaning is divorced from the definition of strongman you provide, so why be obtuse about it?

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#373

Post by rtkwe »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #62
m0llusk wrote: 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…

There's a lot more political polarization, no doubt, but I'm actually not sure it's true that there's more social division. A few decades ago, basic questions like "is it OK for different races to get married" and "should women participate fully in society" remained unresolved, with a ton of people wielding substantial power sitting on the "no" side. (The Handmaid's Tale wasn't meant to be some crazy impossible premi…

There's still time for that backslide to happen we're already seeing conservative reactionary groups pushing for returns to before those questions were 'resolved' in more and less direct terms.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#374

Post by Clubber »

bsenftner wrote: post #318
b112 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the 60s was far, far, far more disillusioned than this.

And the baby boomers who created the upset of the 60's are now in charge, and their disillusioned leadership is pushing these divisions ever wider. They are the institutions and they do not trust themselves, as is clear via the leadership stalemate and both parties destroying their best hopes in favor of the crumbling and ever more distant wealthy status quo.

>And the baby boomers who created the upset of the 60's are now in charge, and their disillusioned leadership is pushing these divisions ever wider.

Why do people think of an entire generation of people as a single minded entity? Might as well say, "women," or "men," or "humans." Did you know the majority of baby boomers weren't hippies? Looking at documentaries of the era, you'd think they were. Many boomers hated hippies. So which boomers are creating these divisions? The hippies or the non-hippies?

>their disillusioned leadership is pushing these divisions ever wider.

This would be much more targeted (and accurate) if you said the current generation of politicians. Last time I checked, I've mostly only had two bad choices for president since I've been voting. The third choice was, "throwing away my vote." Guess who came up with that one? The politicians. When you blame a generation of people, you don't blame the people who actually have the power to make the decisions affecting our lives.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#376

Post by jen20 »

drugstorecowboy wrote: post #256
xhkkffbf wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. I'm very center, perhaps slightly left. But aside from Rachel Maddow, I don't trust what I hear.

"Slightly Left" but the only journalist you trust is Rachel Maddow? That is a very interesting take, I have never heard Maddow described as anything remotely resembling slightly left, only as a caricature of the extreme left.

Every time I read one of these threads I’m reminded that the American “far” Left is broadly equivalent to the European centre-right.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#377

Post by tyingq »

I have noticed a pretty strong trend of "falling apart" in specific niche. It seems related to the combination of inflation and people being fed up with low wages. It's hard to get workers for low paying jobs, and the things those places are selling have gotten more expensive.

So we're paying quite a lot more for services and goods, but the quality of those things are declining at the same time. Declining quality both due to the providers buying lower quality supplies and due to the workers willing to take the lousy jobs not giving a shit.

I see it pretty strongly in areas like restaurants and retail.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#378

Post by RspecMAuthortah »

TimPC wrote: post #211

I'd argue that the greater risk of things falling apart is economic rather than political. We've built our society on two near-ponzi schemes that are in danger of falling apart. The first is pension funds which are paid into by current workers to pay out for past workers. Pension funds inherently depend on population growth to avoid shortfalls. They rely on the fact that more people pay into them then take out from t…

> In my city of Toronto, average real estate prices have gone from 2x average income in 1972 to 16x average income today. To continue growing at this pace they'd have to reach 128x average income by 2072.

Places like Toronto are generally an outlier. Part of it is due to high skilled worker immigration (to read it differently: more well off people emigrating to Canada) and high concentration of jobs in cities like Toronto.

I agree with your thesis although I think it has more to do with CAD losing its value compared to hard assets and a consequence of a decade with bad monetary policy.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#379

Post by TimPC »

john_moscow wrote: post #349
TimPC wrote: post #211

I'd argue that the greater risk of things falling apart is economic rather than political. We've built our society on two near-ponzi schemes that are in danger of falling apart. The first is pension funds which are paid into by current workers to pay out for past workers. Pension funds inherently depend on population growth to avoid shortfalls. They rely on the fact that more people pay into them then take out from t…

Economy and politics always go together. Optimizing the economy for the retirements funds (creating favorable conditions for existing big companies) has eliminated the paths to prosperity for the new generations (you cannot run your own shop to outcompete Loblaws or Walmart, and a cashier job there will never afford you anything more than bare survival). This is discouraging people from starting families and having k…

Most economic discussions are inherently political but it's not the case that most political discussions are inherently economical. I argued that we are avoiding dealing with our economic challenges and are focusing on non-economic political problems.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#380

Post by jimz »

bombcar wrote: post #92
marginalia_nu wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, there have been institutions with almost absurd longevity in history. The catholic church has stood largely unchanged for the 1600 odd years between Constantine and Vatican II. Ancient Egypt was already thousands of years old when Socrates harassed aristocrats in Athens. It's very easy to forget that the revolutions of Britain, France, America, Russia; it happened just a few generations ago, and upended most of t…

The other thing to remember is that even those long-standing institutions had internal change that was a huge deal at the time but is now hardly remembered at all, or considered minor. You can even see this right now, where countries do not consider themselves to be as old as the current government's age, but much older. For example, most Italians will not consider Italy to be "started" at the Republic in '46, or eve…

Italy as a polity, regardless of how real the polity actually existed as a coherent and cohesive governing state, pretty much existed continuously from Rome until entirely left out by the Congress of Vienna in 1805 though. By the time 1848 rolled around most people alive were perfectly aware of the concept of Italy in living memory, and even those who didn't actually live in what was considered Italy - in particular those living in the south from Naples down to Calabria and Sicily, if they were educated and literate, were still aware of the notion of Italy as a distinct political entity. There might not have been much of a centralized government based in Italian territories that represented the polity for long periods of history, but ruling regimes/dynasties come and go but political entities tend to last longer.
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