If we want social renewal, we have to make it straightforward for anyone willing to adopt the values of "thrift, prudence, negotiation, and hard work" to climb the ladder to the middle class.
Thank you all for the wide-ranging comments. I can only add that trust is scale invariant and asymmetric, meaning that once we lose trust in someone or some entity, it's very difficult to restore that trust, whether it's in a relationship, enterprise, nation, etc. Trust is also intuitive, somewhat like love. Just as we cannot be ordered to "fall in love with this person," we can't be ordered to trust someone. We can only be ordered to make a public show of appearing to trust them, but this is meaningless, as being compelled to display a trust we don't feel is a lie with consequences, none of them positive. warm regards, charles
CHS-I appreciate your thoughtful analysis. I doubt that the large government institutions that now existing in America are flexible enough to even consider the ideas in your analysis. If these institutions are clearly no longer working for the people that they "serve," who will defend them? The decision-makers in these institutions need to realize that they need to give the people a good reason to keep them, to evolve them, to reform them, and to sustain them. Maintaining the status quo is not a good reason.
@Timmy - I don't think they exist unless we are still here, supporting them. They have forgotten that they work for us, and they exist only with our consent. They think we work for them.
Some say the true elite need the technocrats to support them
So say .1 percent and another 10 percent of population
If AI takes off then maybe it will be .1 percent and 5 percent
Others tell me an underclass is needed to move the garbage, deliver packages etc
Then there is security apparently on the billionaire island in Florida there are many more security people than those being protected from the underclass
Watch the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes episodes and see households with 80 servants and a few owners
If everyone left the western countries ie the bottom 90 percent then would be interesting
People were sold a myth that west was better
Actually it’s shocking if you read the book White Trash about how people were treated in early America not just black slaves
Basically America is a propaganda myth
There was a nice period I guess for a while
Maybe now global south is truly rising
It’s interesting how the democrats say were doing everything to help Americans both under Biden and Obama and only helped the extreme net worth and high net worth
Our civilization seems to be devoted to fantasy making, isn’t? A civilization driven insane by lying. At first, it was financially profitable to do so and then later necessary for the ruling elites’ mere survival, but if all you do is lie, how do you keep track of what is real? The decline in everything real, productive, wealth creating and not financial manipulation, all of our institutions, the family, society, and for the average individual is constantly denied. If it is not, then it is the fault of those suffering the most, it never that of the system and the people that control it.
I make a connection between this endless denial of the economic decline of the past fifty years and fantasy world that many people are living in. This includes putting all the responsibility of both failure and success on the growing number of increasingly less powerful people, then giving all the rewards of “success” to a small class that effectively faces no consequences except more wealth regardless of what they do. Unless they break omertà, even if it is just to say that the king isn’t wearing any clothing, which is what I think is happening to Donald Trump and perhaps to Eric Adams. They are both corrupt, but not silent.
The decline is completely obvious to anyone who has been alive during the past two, certainly three, generations. It just is, but to quote Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
The Chinese Party-state has worked hard to make it easier for Chinese to become middle class. A big piece of that is keeping the grubby hands of the bourgeoisie off the levers of the state. Once they have full control, with no offsetting factors, the middle class is doomed.
The technology available to us changes how we interact socially.
The distance and format of communication has also changed the logistical support available amongst networks of friends.
The demands made by society are visible to and can be speedily supplied by a titanic, leveraged, corporate global supplier.
These suppliers and local communities need really good politics to stop the former becoming overly dominant among the latter. As suppliers gain administrative power over a captured customer base the freemarket tendency of awarding merit with capital becomes a competition winnable only by political power players and their dependents. This undermines our productive nature because the main quality control feedback loop is through the ballot box instead of consumer choice. The apparatus of democracy is slower than the business systems of a successful corporation. Parliament loses by being unable to adapt fast enough for objective commercial reality.
The logical extension of this dynamic, for thus captured classes of people, is that vital shelter from the elements costs them their autonomy.
When a sufficiently large embodied group of consumers, whose skillset is mainly political, see the opportunity of using their comparative advantage to extract from a society, they do.
The relative opposing force needed to change this direction is something nature must have given to us, or we could not have gotten to be as diverse a polity as we are in the first place.
Intelligence, language, foresight were gifted to us. We can turn them into a curse, if we want, and make society become a rough beast again, but I suspect it will be no country for old or exceptional people.
I had to laugh at violent murderers being executed leading to a safer environment for market. Nowadays, murdering psychopaths become politicians and bureaucrats. They run society.
I hope no one here has forgotten the 3+ years of Covid Madness.
You can forget market and a Middle Class until the evil doers who caused the lockdowns, forced injections, maskings, etc. are brought to some kind of justice.
Violence and crime are up 50% since 2020. We can't keep living this way.
Thank you all for the wide-ranging comments. I can only add that trust is scale invariant and asymmetric, meaning that once we lose trust in someone or some entity, it's very difficult to restore that trust, whether it's in a relationship, enterprise, nation, etc. Trust is also intuitive, somewhat like love. Just as we cannot be ordered to "fall in love with this person," we can't be ordered to trust someone. We can only be ordered to make a public show of appearing to trust them, but this is meaningless, as being compelled to display a trust we don't feel is a lie with consequences, none of them positive. warm regards, charles
CHS-I appreciate your thoughtful analysis. I doubt that the large government institutions that now existing in America are flexible enough to even consider the ideas in your analysis. If these institutions are clearly no longer working for the people that they "serve," who will defend them? The decision-makers in these institutions need to realize that they need to give the people a good reason to keep them, to evolve them, to reform them, and to sustain them. Maintaining the status quo is not a good reason.
Charles, The institutions have decided to do away with us. As George Carlin famously said, "They don't give a fuck about you! AT ALL! AT ALL!"
@Timmy - I don't think they exist unless we are still here, supporting them. They have forgotten that they work for us, and they exist only with our consent. They think we work for them.
Charles, Yeah, the elites fell for their own propaganda of being superior beings.
Interesting observations Charles
Some say the true elite need the technocrats to support them
So say .1 percent and another 10 percent of population
If AI takes off then maybe it will be .1 percent and 5 percent
Others tell me an underclass is needed to move the garbage, deliver packages etc
Then there is security apparently on the billionaire island in Florida there are many more security people than those being protected from the underclass
Watch the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes episodes and see households with 80 servants and a few owners
If everyone left the western countries ie the bottom 90 percent then would be interesting
People were sold a myth that west was better
Actually it’s shocking if you read the book White Trash about how people were treated in early America not just black slaves
Basically America is a propaganda myth
There was a nice period I guess for a while
Maybe now global south is truly rising
It’s interesting how the democrats say were doing everything to help Americans both under Biden and Obama and only helped the extreme net worth and high net worth
So is it incompetence or intentional
I doubt billionaires will be taxed
David, The security personnel could kill the elites. That is how the Mafia started in Sicily.
The billionaires pay taxes with one hand and collect government subsidies with the other. Guess which hand has the most money in it.
Our civilization seems to be devoted to fantasy making, isn’t? A civilization driven insane by lying. At first, it was financially profitable to do so and then later necessary for the ruling elites’ mere survival, but if all you do is lie, how do you keep track of what is real? The decline in everything real, productive, wealth creating and not financial manipulation, all of our institutions, the family, society, and for the average individual is constantly denied. If it is not, then it is the fault of those suffering the most, it never that of the system and the people that control it.
I make a connection between this endless denial of the economic decline of the past fifty years and fantasy world that many people are living in. This includes putting all the responsibility of both failure and success on the growing number of increasingly less powerful people, then giving all the rewards of “success” to a small class that effectively faces no consequences except more wealth regardless of what they do. Unless they break omertà, even if it is just to say that the king isn’t wearing any clothing, which is what I think is happening to Donald Trump and perhaps to Eric Adams. They are both corrupt, but not silent.
The decline is completely obvious to anyone who has been alive during the past two, certainly three, generations. It just is, but to quote Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
JBird, People like being seduced voluntarily. That's why we watch movies. People do NOT like being seduced by force.
People have to decide which affront to them gets them off the couch and doing something about the situation and the people causing it.
The Chinese Party-state has worked hard to make it easier for Chinese to become middle class. A big piece of that is keeping the grubby hands of the bourgeoisie off the levers of the state. Once they have full control, with no offsetting factors, the middle class is doomed.
The technology available to us changes how we interact socially.
The distance and format of communication has also changed the logistical support available amongst networks of friends.
The demands made by society are visible to and can be speedily supplied by a titanic, leveraged, corporate global supplier.
These suppliers and local communities need really good politics to stop the former becoming overly dominant among the latter. As suppliers gain administrative power over a captured customer base the freemarket tendency of awarding merit with capital becomes a competition winnable only by political power players and their dependents. This undermines our productive nature because the main quality control feedback loop is through the ballot box instead of consumer choice. The apparatus of democracy is slower than the business systems of a successful corporation. Parliament loses by being unable to adapt fast enough for objective commercial reality.
The logical extension of this dynamic, for thus captured classes of people, is that vital shelter from the elements costs them their autonomy.
When a sufficiently large embodied group of consumers, whose skillset is mainly political, see the opportunity of using their comparative advantage to extract from a society, they do.
The relative opposing force needed to change this direction is something nature must have given to us, or we could not have gotten to be as diverse a polity as we are in the first place.
Intelligence, language, foresight were gifted to us. We can turn them into a curse, if we want, and make society become a rough beast again, but I suspect it will be no country for old or exceptional people.
I had to laugh at violent murderers being executed leading to a safer environment for market. Nowadays, murdering psychopaths become politicians and bureaucrats. They run society.
I hope no one here has forgotten the 3+ years of Covid Madness.
You can forget market and a Middle Class until the evil doers who caused the lockdowns, forced injections, maskings, etc. are brought to some kind of justice.
Violence and crime are up 50% since 2020. We can't keep living this way.