We live in a time that the working class is unbelievably brainwashed and manipulated.
> We live in a time that the working class is unbelievably brainwashed and manipulated.
I think it has always been that way. Looking through history, there are many examples of turkeys voting for Christmas and propaganda is an old invention. I don’t think there is anything special right now. And to be fair to the working class, it’s not hard to see how they could feel abandoned. It’s also broader than the working class. The middle class is getting squeezed as well. The only winners are the oligarchs.
I think progress (in the sense of economic growth) was roughly in line with what Keynes expected. What he didn't expect is that people, instead of getting 10x the living standard with 1/3 the working hours, rather wanted to have 30x the living standard with the same working hours.
Throughout human history, starting with the spread of agriculture, increased labor efficiency has always led to people consuming more, not to them working less.
Moreover, throughout the 20th century, we saw several periods in different countries when wages rose very rapidly - and this always led to a temporary average increase in hours worked. Because when a worker is told "I'll pay you 50% more" - the answer is usually not "Cool, I can work 30% less", but "Now I'm willing to work 50% more to get 2x of the pay".
The words 'have to' are doing a lot of work in that statement. Some people 'have to' work to literally put food on the table, other people 'have to' work to able to making payments on their new yacht. The world is full of people who could probably live out the rest of their lives without working any more, but doing so would require drastic lifestyle changes they're not willing to make.
I personally think the metric should be something along the lines of how long would it take from losing all your income until you're homeless.
Does one have savings? Can they afford to spend time with their children outside of working day to day? Do they have the ability to take reasonable risks without chancing financial ruin in pursuit of better opportunities?
These are things we typically attribute to someone in the middle class. I worry that boiling down these discussions to “you work and they don’t” misses a lot of opportunity for tangible improvement to quality of life for large number of people.
I agree with your point. Now doctors are working class as well.
No need for AI. Troll farms are well documented and were in action before transformers could string two sentences together.
All the free money dried up and the happy clapping Barney the Dinosaur Internet was no more!
I will not go into specifics because the authoritarians still disagree and think everything is fine with degenerative debauchery and try to abuse anyone even just pointing to failing systems, but it all does seem like civilization ending developments regardless of whether it leads to the rise of another civilization, e.g., the Asian Era, i.e., China, India, Russia, Japan, et al.
Ironically, I don’t see the US surviving this transitional phase, especially considering it essentially does not even really exist anymore at its core. Would any of the founders of America approve of any of America today? The forefathers of India, China, Russia, and maybe Japan would clearly approve of their countries and cultures. America is a hollowed out husk with a facade of red, white, and blue pomp and circumstance that is even fading, where America means both everything and nothing as a manipulative slogan to enrich the few, a massive private equity raid on America.
When you think of the Asian countries, you also think of distinct and unique cultures that all have their advantages and disadvantages, the true differences that make them true diversity that makes humanity so wonderful. In America you have none of that. You have a decimated culture that is jumbled with all kinds of muddled and polluted cultures from all over the place, all equally confused and bewildered about what they are and why they feel so lost only chasing dollars and shiny objects to further enrich the ever smaller group of con artist psychopathic narcissists at the top, a kind of worst form of aristocracy that humanity has yet ever produced, lacking any kind of sense of noblesse oblige, which does not even extend to simply not betraying your own people.
That there's any cultural "degenerative debauchery" is an extraordinary claim. Can you back up this claim with evidence?
"Decimated," "muddled," and "polluted" imply you have an objective analysis framework for culture. Typically people who study culture avoid moralizing like this because one very quickly ends up looking very foolish. What do you know that the anthropologists and sociologists don't, to where you use these terms so freely?
If I seem aggressive, it's because I'm quite tired of vague handwaving around "degeneracy" and identity politics. Too often these conversations are completely presumptive.
What's the sense in asking for examples? If one person sees ubiquitous cultural decay and the other says "this is fine," I think the difference is down to worldview. And for a pessimist and an optimist to cite examples at one another is unlikely to change the other's worldview.
If a pessimist said, "the opioid crisis is deadlier than the crack epidemic and nobody cares," would that change the optimist's mind?
If a pessimist said, "the rate of suicide has increased by 30% since the year 2000," would that change the optimist's mind?
If a pessimist said, "corporate profits, wealth inequality, household debt, and homelessness are all at record highs," ...?
And coming from the other side, all these things can be Steven Pinker'd if you want to feel like "yes there are real problems but actually things are better than ever."
There was a book that said something about "you will recognize them by their fruit." If these problems are the fruit born of our culture, it's worth asking how we got here instead of dismissing it with "What do you know that the anthropologists and sociologists don't?"
Capitalism arrives for everyone, Asia is just late for the party. Once it eventually financializes everything, the same will happen to it. Capitalism eventually eats itself, doesn't matter the language or how many centuries your people might have.
Keynes lived in a time when the working class could not buy cheap from China... and complain that everybody else was doing the same!
