Capitalism is good. There's probably a way to do it without fucking everyone over though. The solution to finding this is not to destroy advanced societies which have concepts of social justice within the framework already, it's to disabuse ourselves of the notion that there's no other way to get there.
those brown people sure need us to teach them capitalism or else they might get stuck with um
basic trading? Not quite sure how that precludes development, especially as compared to being borderline slave labour.
Well, do me a favor and show me a group or nation in the third-world on an accelerated development course without the use of capitalist economic philosophy or massive amounts of aid from capitalist countries. I promise I'll admit I'm wrong if you do.
You're the third person to mention race in a conversation in which it was never brought up.
You're begging the question.
Of course under-developed capitalist nations will require aid from more developed capitalist nations in order to take part in the very capitalism that was forced upon the "developing nation" by liberalism's imperialist economic framework.
And "mud hut dwellers" seems a little much, eh?
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
I'll ask you to re-read the original usage for proper context.
Therein, I'm clearly insinuating that those "mud huts" are what people will have to look forward to returning to if industrialized nations take their business elsewhere for seemingly more moral reasons.
Though, in fairness, the developing nations in places like Southeast Asia are far more likely to return to woven bamboo shanties than they are mud huts.
I'll ask you to re-read the original usage for proper context.
Therein, I'm clearly insinuating that those "mud huts" are what people will have to look forward to returning to if industrialized nations take their business elsewhere for seemingly more moral reasons.
Though, in fairness, the developing nations in places like Southeast Asia are far more likely to return to woven bamboo shanties than they are mud huts.
those brown people sure need us to teach them capitalism or else they might get stuck with um
basic trading? Not quite sure how that precludes development, especially as compared to being borderline slave labour.
Well, do me a favor and show me a group or nation in the third-world on an accelerated development course without the use of capitalist economic philosophy or massive amounts of aid from capitalist countries. I promise I'll admit I'm wrong if you do.
You're the third person to mention race in a conversation in which it was never brought up.
You're begging the question.
Of course under-developed capitalist nations will require aid from more developed capitalist nations in order to take part in the very capitalism that was forced upon the "developing nation" by liberalism's imperialist economic framework.
Basically, your statement hinges on the idea that it is only the Western capitalist cultural act of imperialism that is able to sustain growth and stability within a society; that without the help of the glorious liberal West, the rest of the undeveloped "tribe" would revert back into some primitive culture of "mud hut dwellers".
Capitalism is good. There's probably a way to do it without fucking everyone over though. The solution to finding this is not to destroy advanced societies which have concepts of social justice within the framework already, it's to disabuse ourselves of the notion that there's no other way to get there.
No, there really isn't a way that doesn't involve the "hi-ho-fuck-you" to make it work. Capitalism is a great thing for very rapid growth as a nation but it's a horrible curse on the population.
We can't be a manufacturing (what made us strong) nation again because of social justice, we will always be under bid, those days are fucking gone and done. So now we have nothing to make us "rich" but shovling money about turning it into more money. I'm still not sure how it works, but my 401k and 403b are making money
The reality is we have a choice now, and we need to make it. We can become a dieing power like all of old Europe and embark on a great social justice campaign and watch the developing world rush past us hoping they do the same. Or we can ditch that, crush the poor and middle class, and then start manufacturing crap again and return to a new area of American power. We can't do both.
The reality hit's even harder at home. Our push for education is nonsensical. People with an education already feel way to entitled here to walking into the job market and making cash. So we educate more, then who builds the roads, Mexicans that's fucking who. So job creation fails.
Either we become a welfare state, and I don't mean that in a bad way fuck I'd like it, or we return to the old ways and some people have to suck it up. There is no other option.
I'll ask you to re-read the original usage for proper context.
Therein, I'm clearly insinuating that those "mud huts" are what people will have to look forward to returning to if industrialized nations take their business elsewhere for seemingly more moral reasons.
Though, in fairness, the developing nations in places like Southeast Asia are far more likely to return to woven bamboo shanties than they are mud huts.
This is just an aside and I thought it would be very enlightening to talk about!
When countries like the United States or China move into economically poor continents like Africa, what I find interesting is that instead of empowering the local populations by providing a livable wage, training, and an education - in China's case, they actually import workers, leaving the local community to struggle due to a lack of jobs.
That's just one example with some fancy statistics, but I'm a firm believer that giving aid is merely a band-aid on a larger problem. Instead, companies can empower local communities by giving them not the bare minimum monetarily, but something better a little higher while providing an education that will be imparted to future generations.
I think capitalism has its place, but not the capitalism as we know it. Capitalism is driven by maximizing your profits at the cost of the very people you rely on, because ultimately you view them as a very replaceable resource. You see this in the video game industry and how they treat their employees.
"You're a resource that produces code. If you burn out, I have ten more resources I can tap."
I think that's the problem with capitalism...it's got a "what's mine is mine" mentality that just isn't conducive towards healthy human relationships.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited January 2010
No, there really isn't a way that doesn't involve the "hi-ho-fuck-you" to make it work. Capitalism is a great thing for very rapid growth as a nation but it's a horrible curse on the population.
Given the murder rates in pre-industrial societies (and average life expectancies), I would strongly disagree.
Tribal societies with 10-60% murder rates kind of suck :<
Capitalism is good. There's probably a way to do it without fucking everyone over though. The solution to finding this is not to destroy advanced societies which have concepts of social justice within the framework already, it's to disabuse ourselves of the notion that there's no other way to get there.
No, there really isn't a way that doesn't involve the "hi-ho-fuck-you" to make it work. Capitalism is a great thing for very rapid growth as a nation but it's a horrible curse on the population.
We can't be a manufacturing (what made us strong) nation again because of social justice, we will always be under bid, those days are fucking gone and done. So now we have nothing to make us "rich" but shovling money about turning it into more money. I'm still not sure how it works, but my 401k and 403b are making money
The reality is we have a choice now, and we need to make it. We can become a dieing power like all of old Europe and embark on a great social justice campaign and watch the developing world rush past us hoping they do the same. Or we can ditch that, crush the poor and middle class, and then start manufacturing crap again and return to a new area of American power. We can't do both.
The reality hit's even harder at home. Our push for education is nonsensical. People with an education already feel way to entitled here to walking into the job market and making cash. So we educate more, then who builds the roads, Mexicans that's fucking who. So job creation fails.
Either we become a welfare state, and I don't mean that in a bad way fuck I'd like it, or we return to the old ways and some people have to suck it up. There is no other option.
Deregulation hasn't exactly helped either. Conditions in slaughterhouses used to be atrocious - then unions came around and made things a bit better, and then deregulation in the 1980s made them horrible places to work. As an employee, you're treated like a machine - there's no desire to build a sense of community because you're very expendable.
If you want to see an example of how treating employees right works wonders - see Costco. CEO makes 300,000 a year, most employees start between $12-$17 an hour, and a sense of community and pride is developed amongst co-workers. Oh - and benefits!
That's a more humane form of capitalism - instead of seeing your employees as resources - you see them as people.
Every job in some sense requires an education nowadays - whether it's a trade school or university. The key is treating everyone like a person rather than a resource.
When countries like the United States or China move into economically poor continents like Africa, what I find interesting is that instead of empowering the local populations by providing a livable wage, training, and an education - in China's case, they actually import workers, leaving the local community to struggle due to a lack of jobs.
It's far-reaching, as well.
Not only importing jobs or economic assumptions, the imperial power imports the entirety of the framework of their culture in an act of domination. In the case of a country like Egypt, an entire "ruling class" of Egyptians was created on the express intent to make them into a "governing class". This is more than simply saying, "you're in power now!", as along with the governmental forms and arbitrary designations of power dynamics what you also get is a parallel force that seeks to supplant the existing identity of the colonized. The new "ruling class" is distinguished by their mimicry of the colonizer's culture, philosophy, art etc. while the colonizer and colonized both understand and accept that the "Egyptian-European" cultural model is a sheer ridiculous endeavor which causes 1) ridicule from the colonizer, because the colonized "doesn't get it right", and 2) provides a measure by which the colonized can "track" how close they are to becoming a "civilized nation" by how close to that cultural uncanny-valley they can come without actually becoming any more than an "other" by which both the colonizer and colonized define themselves.
On another tangent, my current line of thinking is exploring the fact that American culture is currently being colonized by "free-market" ideals producing a similar effect on the middle and working class. The difference being that the imperial force is the nebulous and incorporeal "market". Ayn Rand etc. seems to, at least, support this considering how her work is obsessed with the idea of humans attempting to imitate and mimic ideals of the marketplace as cultural identities.
No, there really isn't a way that doesn't involve the "hi-ho-fuck-you" to make it work. Capitalism is a great thing for very rapid growth as a nation but it's a horrible curse on the population.
Given the murder rates in pre-industrial societies (and average life expectancies), I would strongly disagree.
Tribal societies with 10-60% murder rates kind of suck :<
Well, you can't just quote numbers.
For example, murder rates in America grossly skew toward economic-context crimes, that is to say that outside of persons with mental disorders, the most murders are committed by those who are in a negative socio-economic position.
Don't mistake correlation to causation, as the advancement of our society is a good thing. Capitalism has facilitated that advancement. It certainly doesn't mean that our culture and our humanity would be inversely effected by a decrease in capitalism's power.
Look at Europe, where many crime rates are much lower than in America. European nations are far more socialist than we are, and the effects of capitalism have been minimized without an inverse effect on our scientific, cultural and behavioral progress.
Capitalism is good. There's probably a way to do it without fucking everyone over though. The solution to finding this is not to destroy advanced societies which have concepts of social justice within the framework already, it's to disabuse ourselves of the notion that there's no other way to get there.
No, there really isn't a way that doesn't involve the "hi-ho-fuck-you" to make it work. Capitalism is a great thing for very rapid growth as a nation but it's a horrible curse on the population.
We can't be a manufacturing (what made us strong) nation again because of social justice, we will always be under bid, those days are fucking gone and done. So now we have nothing to make us "rich" but shovling money about turning it into more money. I'm still not sure how it works, but my 401k and 403b are making money
The reality is we have a choice now, and we need to make it. We can become a dieing power like all of old Europe and embark on a great social justice campaign and watch the developing world rush past us hoping they do the same. Or we can ditch that, crush the poor and middle class, and then start manufacturing crap again and return to a new area of American power. We can't do both.
The reality hit's even harder at home. Our push for education is nonsensical. People with an education already feel way to entitled here to walking into the job market and making cash. So we educate more, then who builds the roads, Mexicans that's fucking who. So job creation fails.
Either we become a welfare state, and I don't mean that in a bad way fuck I'd like it, or we return to the old ways and some people have to suck it up. There is no other option.
Deregulation hasn't exactly helped either. Conditions in slaughterhouses used to be atrocious - then unions came around and made things a bit better, and then deregulation in the 1980s made them horrible places to work. As an employee, you're treated like a machine - there's no desire to build a sense of community because you're very expendable.
If you want to see an example of how treating employees right works wonders - see Costco. CEO makes 300,000 a year, most employees start between $12-$17 an hour, and a sense of community and pride is developed amongst co-workers. Oh - and benefits!
That's a more humane form of capitalism - instead of seeing your employees as resources - you see them as people.
Every job in some sense requires an education nowadays - whether it's a trade school or university. The key is treating everyone like a person rather than a resource.
You're speaking madness, sir! Madness!!!
If history has taught us anything, it's that humans are dicks and will generally screw over as many people as possible to attain wealth and power. Costco is an exception to this, but don't expect it to become some kind of trend.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited January 2010
Well, you can't just quote numbers.
For example, murder rates in America grossly skew toward economic-context crimes, that is to say that outside of persons with mental disorders, the most murders are committed by those who are in a negative socio-economic position.
Don't mistake correlation to causation, as the advancement of our society is a good thing. Capitalism has facilitated that advancement. It certainly doesn't mean that our culture and our humanity would be inversely effected by a decrease in capitalism's power.
Look at Europe, where many crime rates are much lower than in America. European nations are far more socialist than we are, and the effects of capitalism have been minimized without an inverse effect on our scientific, cultural and behavioral progress.
My point was more that anything is better than what they had. Capitalism has its problems (and they are exploited craply), but the shitness of capitalism is a better class of shitness.
It's not a "this is the best" statement it's a "this is better (given they started at super-shit)".
Capitalism has its problems (and they are exploited craply), but the shitness of capitalism is a better class of shitness.
Capitalism: Slightly-less shitty shit.
Defeatism isn't a pro-capitalism argument, by the way.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited January 2010
Defeatism isn't a pro-capitalism argument, by the way.
The problem is that it will, eventually, result in them joining the rest of the world in living standards and earnings etc, because it's in both their and our interests. I don't know of another mechanism that has the same taint of inevitability.
I mean, what other option is there? Aid is a black hole, I'm just honestly not really sure what we could do otherwise.
Defeatism isn't a pro-capitalism argument, by the way.
The problem is that it will, eventually, result in them joining the rest of the world in living standards and earnings etc, because it's in both their and our interests. I don't know of another mechanism that has the same taint of inevitability.
I mean, what other option is there? Aid is a black hole, I'm just honestly not really sure what we could do otherwise.
You assume that some of these cultures see our way of life as in "their best interests."
I mean, obviously if we went to living in a single room house with 3 other people and had to cultivate our own crops, we might go insane, but some cultures dig that.
When they don't dig that, we own them (see native americans).
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Dr Mario KartGames DealerAustin, TXRegistered Userregular
edited January 2010
The rest of the world cant possibly join the US in its standard of living because our standard of living is predicated on exploiting poorer nations and secondarily: growth in spending FOREVER. That is to say, its unsustainable and OUR standard of living is going to come down.
The rest of the world cant possibly join the US in its standard of living because our standard of living is predicated on exploiting poorer nations and secondarily: growth in spending FOREVER. That is to say, its unsustainable and OUR standard of living is going to come down.
Well, I think people earning over 100 k are going to have to suck it up and start learning how to share the wealth, that's for sure.
But on second thought, no, they won't. The only people who are going to have to suck it up are the lower classes. Like they have been. For centuries.
Defeatism isn't a pro-capitalism argument, by the way.
The problem is that it will, eventually, result in them joining the rest of the world in living standards and earnings etc, because it's in both their and our interests. I don't know of another mechanism that has the same taint of inevitability.
I mean, what other option is there? Aid is a black hole, I'm just honestly not really sure what we could do otherwise.
The eventual action will be the assumption of new markets. Capitalism doesn't care one bit about "lifting the ships", it cares about expansion of markets and capital.
There is a specific discursive duality to capitalism in which there must exist a stratified, class based society. In layman's terms it means that there always must be those who control production and those who produce. If the entire world were suddenly lifted into the comfortable middle class, free-market capitalism would attempt to correct for this imbalance.
There are many variations in theory, one of which is the Anarcho-Capitalist model in which the market corrects itself by shifting itself into a purely consumer operation via the roboticization of industry and the elimination of "labor jobs". This has its own issues, as well.
The rest of the world cant possibly join the US in its standard of living because our standard of living is predicated on exploiting poorer nations and secondarily: growth in spending FOREVER. That is to say, its unsustainable and OUR standard of living is going to come down.
Well, I think people earning over 100 k are going to have to suck it up and start learning how to share the wealth, that's for sure.
But on second thought, no, they won't. The only people who are going to have to suck it up are the lower classes. Like they have been. For centuries.
But even so, I think there are tell-tale signs of a shift in the traditional Marxist economic argument. Namely, that we now have a mass-production consumer culture that is objectifying and killing off the middle class. namely, that the market has replaced the "bosses" as a reflection in discourse to the working class.
It is no longer a matter of lower vs. higher class war. It is a matter of market vs. individuals of all classes getting objectified and alienated by consumption.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited January 2010
You assume that some of these cultures see our way of life as in "their best interests."
I mean, obviously if we went to living in a single room house with 3 other people and had to cultivate our own crops, we might go insane, but some cultures dig that.
When they don't dig that, we own them (see native americans).
They may not see it directly, but frankly certain human desires are universal. Security (decreased crime), Health, food - all these things are normally desired. And even places like india are managing these things better than their tribal forebears. I fail to see how anybody could make the judgement that these things would not be good for them.
The eventual action will be the assumption of new markets. Capitalism doesn't care one bit about "lifting the ships", it cares about expansion of markets and capital.
There is a specific discursive duality to capitalism in which there must exist a stratified, class based society. In layman's terms it means that there always must be those who control production and those who produce. If the entire world were suddenly lifted into the comfortable middle class, free-market capitalism would attempt to correct for this imbalance.
There are many variations in theory, one of which is the Anarcho-Capitalist model in which the market corrects itself by shifting itself into a purely consumer operation via the roboticization of industry and the elimination of "labor jobs". This has its own issues, as well.
Key word here is eventual. You haven't actually suggested a course of action.
Also I suspect that to a large degree what you suggest will happen in the latter will sort of happen (roboticisation is fairly inevitable), and I strongly suspect that certain types of good will end up practically post-scarcity.
Namely, that we now have a mass-production consumer culture that is objectifying and killing off the middle class. namely, that the market has replaced the "bosses" as a reflection in discourse to the working class.
The eventual action will be the assumption of new markets. Capitalism doesn't care one bit about "lifting the ships", it cares about expansion of markets and capital.
There is a specific discursive duality to capitalism in which there must exist a stratified, class based society. In layman's terms it means that there always must be those who control production and those who produce. If the entire world were suddenly lifted into the comfortable middle class, free-market capitalism would attempt to correct for this imbalance.
There are many variations in theory, one of which is the Anarcho-Capitalist model in which the market corrects itself by shifting itself into a purely consumer operation via the roboticization of industry and the elimination of "labor jobs". This has its own issues, as well.
Key word here is eventual. You haven't actually suggested a course of action.
Also I suspect that to a large degree what you suggest will happen in the latter will sort of happen (roboticisation is fairly inevitable), and I strongly suspect that certain types of good will end up practically post-scarcity.
Namely, that we now have a mass-production consumer culture that is objectifying and killing off the middle class. namely, that the market has replaced the "bosses" as a reflection in discourse to the working class.
What do you mean by this?
I've put forth my ideas earlier in the thread. It boils down to the fact that any change must be gradual. A move toward a socialist model is the first step: rein in the markets, correct income disparity and adjust for standard of living.
The second question is me being a theory-wanker. Namely, that older Marxist distinctions of bosses vs. labor is not longer applicable in our current context. Instead we have a mass-production consumer culture in which everyone is just as screwed as labor was in the 19th century, just in a different way. Like how the financial industry relies on making money from more money, our market focuses on exploiting consumption from all social walks of life in order to continue to expand and consume. "New markets", in the traditional sense, are no longer the areas of capital's expansion. Instead capitalism co-opts the "green movement" and "animal cruelty" as a marketable, consumable expansion of the market.
What I'd like to see done away with is golden parachutes. Corporate heads can run their company into the ground and be rewarded for it, their employees who don't have the golden parachute are fucked.
surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited January 2010
I in general think pay and company structure is utterly screwed from the point of view of trying to get people to perform. Especially when you consider that doing a job well gets one promoted to a different job... which seems so utterly backwards I can scarcely believe it.
I in general think pay and company structure is utterly screwed from the point of view of trying to get people to perform. Especially when you consider that doing a job well gets one promoted to a different job... which seems so utterly backwards I can scarcely believe it.
More problematic, in my eyes, is that our culture necessitates that even those who "produce" must continually be re-packaged and made consumable in an endless cycle.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited January 2010
More problematic, in my eyes, is that our culture necessitates that even those who "produce" must continually be re-packaged and made consumable in an endless cycle.
More problematic, in my eyes, is that our culture necessitates that even those who "produce" must continually be re-packaged and made consumable in an endless cycle.
What do you mean by this?
That we are no longer "ourselves" as autonomous entities. We are defined by our skills and job descriptions. In an age where Americans will have 4+ careers, we are continually attending trainings to consume more skills (at hefty $price) and continually "progressing" our professional life to create a "better package". Our labor, which has always been a commodity to be bought and sold, is no longer anything more than the regurgitation of that which we consume from the market for professional skills.
In example, the person who knows the ins and outs of their job is rarer and rarer to encounter. Instead we have high turnover, and, as you mention, continual progress in which we fundamentally change our skillsets and areas of expertise in order to convince companies to consume our skills.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited January 2010
While that happens somewhat, my experience has been that that only tends to happen in jobs where there is very little skill involved in the first place (eg 90% of office jobs). You don't really observe that with my area (science) as much, or I would imagine in things like music creation.
But I see what you mean. Although I don't think it's a problem with the commercialisation of skill (that is an inevitability as teaching gets better) but more a problem with employment structure.
And don't get me wrong, I talk about theory and far reaching ideas of how power structures work but in the end it is the small efforts and changes that actually shift the balances.
We still end up with the practical issue of the fact that American legislators are so far in the pocket of the market that actual reform is impossible.
I think that things just move a lot faster these days, is all. The lifespan of a skill or industry has become significantly less than the lifespan of a career. I don't necesasrily think you can blame consumerism on the fact that COBOL programmers aren't needed anymore.
I think that things just move a lot faster these days, is all. The lifespan of a skill or industry has become significantly less than the lifespan of a career. I don't necesasrily think you can blame consumerism on the fact that COBOL programmers aren't needed anymore.
Capitalism is good. There's probably a way to do it without fucking everyone over though. The solution to finding this is not to destroy advanced societies which have concepts of social justice within the framework already, it's to disabuse ourselves of the notion that there's no other way to get there.
The reality hit's even harder at home. Our push for education is nonsensical. People with an education already feel way to entitled here to walking into the job market and making cash.
I keep hearing that our culture is entitled as shit, mostly the young people, but from my point of view its the boomers that are entitled fuckwads at this point, because they worked hard so its fine letting everything else burn as long as their retirement and health care are secure.
Anyway, I'm going to have to go with [CITATION NEEDED] on any group except teenagers largely thinking they'll be handed a job and making a fortune just by getting a degree, because anecdotally that's not at all what I see day to day
The problem isnt feeling entitled to walking in and making cash...
There is an feeling of deserving somewhat of a shot and not every job requiring 5-8 years of experience.
The problem is, we need to spend that 80k to do what people 20 years ago could just decide they wanted to. The education just gets us in the door at an entry level. Yes, you're probably completely screwed if you didnt have that education to get that entry level spot. But our parents and grandparents didnt have that problem. They didnt have to start off their adult lives at -80k. When you look at it that way, its understandable our generation is a little peeved.
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
The problem isnt feeling entitled to walking in and making cash...
There is an feeling of deserving somewhat of a shot and not every job requiring 5-8 years of experience.
The problem is, we need to spend that 80k to do what people 20 years ago could just decide they wanted to. The education just gets us in the door at an entry level. Yes, you're probably completely screwed if you didnt have that education to get that entry level spot. But our parents and grandparents didnt have that problem. They didnt have to start off their adult lives at -80k. When you look at it that way, its understandable our generation is a little peeved.
Theres this secret code where that people who dropped out of college/high school have to give other people who dropped out a chance at entry level positions. All I'm gonna say.
Well right, I don't think wanting to have a decent chance at not being a pauper without driving yourself into debt that you may never pay off in the richest country in the world is unreasonable. My grandfather would call wanting the government to give out more student aid entitlement, but there's no factory I can just walk in to out of highschool, get paid a decent wage with steady increases until I retire at.
I'm not saying the previous generation had it easy, but this culture of strangling people with debt before they even start working is ridiculous.
The problem isnt feeling entitled to walking in and making cash...
There is an feeling of deserving somewhat of a shot and not every job requiring 5-8 years of experience.
The problem is, we need to spend that 80k to do what people 20 years ago could just decide they wanted to. The education just gets us in the door at an entry level. Yes, you're probably completely screwed if you didnt have that education to get that entry level spot. But our parents and grandparents didnt have that problem. They didnt have to start off their adult lives at -80k. When you look at it that way, its understandable our generation is a little peeved.
I think it's more the younger generation feels entitled to a job a fucking trained monkey couldn't do.
There are very few jobs available that require any actual creativity or thought. And funnily enough, the least creative jobs go to the Uneducated and the Overeducated (ie - people with useless University degrees).
The problem isnt feeling entitled to walking in and making cash...
There is an feeling of deserving somewhat of a shot and not every job requiring 5-8 years of experience.
The problem is, we need to spend that 80k to do what people 20 years ago could just decide they wanted to. The education just gets us in the door at an entry level. Yes, you're probably completely screwed if you didnt have that education to get that entry level spot. But our parents and grandparents didnt have that problem. They didnt have to start off their adult lives at -80k. When you look at it that way, its understandable our generation is a little peeved.
I think it's more the younger generation feels entitled to a job a fucking trained monkey couldn't do.
There are very few jobs available that require any actual creativity or thought. And funnily enough, the least creative jobs go to the Uneducated and the Overeducated (ie - people with useless University degrees).
Or, perhaps the better way to approach the problem is to look at what has changed in our culture and society that requires a college education in order to get a decent job.
A good place to start is in education standards (numbers) and looking at who benefits.
The problem isnt feeling entitled to walking in and making cash...
There is an feeling of deserving somewhat of a shot and not every job requiring 5-8 years of experience.
The problem is, we need to spend that 80k to do what people 20 years ago could just decide they wanted to. The education just gets us in the door at an entry level. Yes, you're probably completely screwed if you didnt have that education to get that entry level spot. But our parents and grandparents didnt have that problem. They didnt have to start off their adult lives at -80k. When you look at it that way, its understandable our generation is a little peeved.
I think it's more the younger generation feels entitled to a job a fucking trained monkey couldn't do.
There are very few jobs available that require any actual creativity or thought. And funnily enough, the least creative jobs go to the Uneducated and the Overeducated (ie - people with useless University degrees).
Or, perhaps the better way to approach the problem is to look at what has changed in our culture and society that requires a college education in order to get a decent job.
A good place to start is in education standards (numbers) and looking at who benefits.
The loss of manufacturing, I'd guess. Define "decent job".
Comparing economic systems by studying different cultures or nations seems like a useful practice but the fact is that there are no longer any cultures or nations around that either aren't capitalistic or affected by capitalism.
People in developing countries can't go back to living in their "mudhuts" since America has been exporting cheap food for decades now. It's no longer profitable to continue farming and having them become dependent on us for their way of life definitely has it drawbacks like the food crisis that happened when we stopped importing cheap crops and decided to use a lot of our excess corn to make ethanol.
What I'm proposing is that instead of exploiting other nations for their exports we begin to pay them a reasonable price for them and help in building sustainable infrastructure since I'm sure there's a profit in it.
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You're begging the question.
Of course under-developed capitalist nations will require aid from more developed capitalist nations in order to take part in the very capitalism that was forced upon the "developing nation" by liberalism's imperialist economic framework.
And "mud hut dwellers" seems a little much, eh?
I'll ask you to re-read the original usage for proper context.
Therein, I'm clearly insinuating that those "mud huts" are what people will have to look forward to returning to if industrialized nations take their business elsewhere for seemingly more moral reasons.
Though, in fairness, the developing nations in places like Southeast Asia are far more likely to return to woven bamboo shanties than they are mud huts.
Let's try this again, shall we?
No, there really isn't a way that doesn't involve the "hi-ho-fuck-you" to make it work. Capitalism is a great thing for very rapid growth as a nation but it's a horrible curse on the population.
We can't be a manufacturing (what made us strong) nation again because of social justice, we will always be under bid, those days are fucking gone and done. So now we have nothing to make us "rich" but shovling money about turning it into more money. I'm still not sure how it works, but my 401k and 403b are making money
The reality is we have a choice now, and we need to make it. We can become a dieing power like all of old Europe and embark on a great social justice campaign and watch the developing world rush past us hoping they do the same. Or we can ditch that, crush the poor and middle class, and then start manufacturing crap again and return to a new area of American power. We can't do both.
The reality hit's even harder at home. Our push for education is nonsensical. People with an education already feel way to entitled here to walking into the job market and making cash. So we educate more, then who builds the roads, Mexicans that's fucking who. So job creation fails.
Either we become a welfare state, and I don't mean that in a bad way fuck I'd like it, or we return to the old ways and some people have to suck it up. There is no other option.
This is just an aside and I thought it would be very enlightening to talk about!
When countries like the United States or China move into economically poor continents like Africa, what I find interesting is that instead of empowering the local populations by providing a livable wage, training, and an education - in China's case, they actually import workers, leaving the local community to struggle due to a lack of jobs.
http://www.international.ucla.edu/media/files/80.pdf
That's just one example with some fancy statistics, but I'm a firm believer that giving aid is merely a band-aid on a larger problem. Instead, companies can empower local communities by giving them not the bare minimum monetarily, but something better a little higher while providing an education that will be imparted to future generations.
I think capitalism has its place, but not the capitalism as we know it. Capitalism is driven by maximizing your profits at the cost of the very people you rely on, because ultimately you view them as a very replaceable resource. You see this in the video game industry and how they treat their employees.
"You're a resource that produces code. If you burn out, I have ten more resources I can tap."
I think that's the problem with capitalism...it's got a "what's mine is mine" mentality that just isn't conducive towards healthy human relationships.
Given the murder rates in pre-industrial societies (and average life expectancies), I would strongly disagree.
Tribal societies with 10-60% murder rates kind of suck :<
Deregulation hasn't exactly helped either. Conditions in slaughterhouses used to be atrocious - then unions came around and made things a bit better, and then deregulation in the 1980s made them horrible places to work. As an employee, you're treated like a machine - there's no desire to build a sense of community because you're very expendable.
If you want to see an example of how treating employees right works wonders - see Costco. CEO makes 300,000 a year, most employees start between $12-$17 an hour, and a sense of community and pride is developed amongst co-workers. Oh - and benefits!
That's a more humane form of capitalism - instead of seeing your employees as resources - you see them as people.
Every job in some sense requires an education nowadays - whether it's a trade school or university. The key is treating everyone like a person rather than a resource.
It's far-reaching, as well.
Not only importing jobs or economic assumptions, the imperial power imports the entirety of the framework of their culture in an act of domination. In the case of a country like Egypt, an entire "ruling class" of Egyptians was created on the express intent to make them into a "governing class". This is more than simply saying, "you're in power now!", as along with the governmental forms and arbitrary designations of power dynamics what you also get is a parallel force that seeks to supplant the existing identity of the colonized. The new "ruling class" is distinguished by their mimicry of the colonizer's culture, philosophy, art etc. while the colonizer and colonized both understand and accept that the "Egyptian-European" cultural model is a sheer ridiculous endeavor which causes 1) ridicule from the colonizer, because the colonized "doesn't get it right", and 2) provides a measure by which the colonized can "track" how close they are to becoming a "civilized nation" by how close to that cultural uncanny-valley they can come without actually becoming any more than an "other" by which both the colonizer and colonized define themselves.
On another tangent, my current line of thinking is exploring the fact that American culture is currently being colonized by "free-market" ideals producing a similar effect on the middle and working class. The difference being that the imperial force is the nebulous and incorporeal "market". Ayn Rand etc. seems to, at least, support this considering how her work is obsessed with the idea of humans attempting to imitate and mimic ideals of the marketplace as cultural identities.
Well, you can't just quote numbers.
For example, murder rates in America grossly skew toward economic-context crimes, that is to say that outside of persons with mental disorders, the most murders are committed by those who are in a negative socio-economic position.
Don't mistake correlation to causation, as the advancement of our society is a good thing. Capitalism has facilitated that advancement. It certainly doesn't mean that our culture and our humanity would be inversely effected by a decrease in capitalism's power.
Look at Europe, where many crime rates are much lower than in America. European nations are far more socialist than we are, and the effects of capitalism have been minimized without an inverse effect on our scientific, cultural and behavioral progress.
You're speaking madness, sir! Madness!!!
If history has taught us anything, it's that humans are dicks and will generally screw over as many people as possible to attain wealth and power. Costco is an exception to this, but don't expect it to become some kind of trend.
My point was more that anything is better than what they had. Capitalism has its problems (and they are exploited craply), but the shitness of capitalism is a better class of shitness.
It's not a "this is the best" statement it's a "this is better (given they started at super-shit)".
The problem is that it will, eventually, result in them joining the rest of the world in living standards and earnings etc, because it's in both their and our interests. I don't know of another mechanism that has the same taint of inevitability.
I mean, what other option is there? Aid is a black hole, I'm just honestly not really sure what we could do otherwise.
You assume that some of these cultures see our way of life as in "their best interests."
I mean, obviously if we went to living in a single room house with 3 other people and had to cultivate our own crops, we might go insane, but some cultures dig that.
When they don't dig that, we own them (see native americans).
Well, I think people earning over 100 k are going to have to suck it up and start learning how to share the wealth, that's for sure.
But on second thought, no, they won't. The only people who are going to have to suck it up are the lower classes. Like they have been. For centuries.
The eventual action will be the assumption of new markets. Capitalism doesn't care one bit about "lifting the ships", it cares about expansion of markets and capital.
There is a specific discursive duality to capitalism in which there must exist a stratified, class based society. In layman's terms it means that there always must be those who control production and those who produce. If the entire world were suddenly lifted into the comfortable middle class, free-market capitalism would attempt to correct for this imbalance.
There are many variations in theory, one of which is the Anarcho-Capitalist model in which the market corrects itself by shifting itself into a purely consumer operation via the roboticization of industry and the elimination of "labor jobs". This has its own issues, as well.
But even so, I think there are tell-tale signs of a shift in the traditional Marxist economic argument. Namely, that we now have a mass-production consumer culture that is objectifying and killing off the middle class. namely, that the market has replaced the "bosses" as a reflection in discourse to the working class.
It is no longer a matter of lower vs. higher class war. It is a matter of market vs. individuals of all classes getting objectified and alienated by consumption.
They may not see it directly, but frankly certain human desires are universal. Security (decreased crime), Health, food - all these things are normally desired. And even places like india are managing these things better than their tribal forebears. I fail to see how anybody could make the judgement that these things would not be good for them.
Key word here is eventual. You haven't actually suggested a course of action.
Also I suspect that to a large degree what you suggest will happen in the latter will sort of happen (roboticisation is fairly inevitable), and I strongly suspect that certain types of good will end up practically post-scarcity.
What do you mean by this?
I've put forth my ideas earlier in the thread. It boils down to the fact that any change must be gradual. A move toward a socialist model is the first step: rein in the markets, correct income disparity and adjust for standard of living.
The second question is me being a theory-wanker. Namely, that older Marxist distinctions of bosses vs. labor is not longer applicable in our current context. Instead we have a mass-production consumer culture in which everyone is just as screwed as labor was in the 19th century, just in a different way. Like how the financial industry relies on making money from more money, our market focuses on exploiting consumption from all social walks of life in order to continue to expand and consume. "New markets", in the traditional sense, are no longer the areas of capital's expansion. Instead capitalism co-opts the "green movement" and "animal cruelty" as a marketable, consumable expansion of the market.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_parachute
More problematic, in my eyes, is that our culture necessitates that even those who "produce" must continually be re-packaged and made consumable in an endless cycle.
What do you mean by this?
That we are no longer "ourselves" as autonomous entities. We are defined by our skills and job descriptions. In an age where Americans will have 4+ careers, we are continually attending trainings to consume more skills (at hefty $price) and continually "progressing" our professional life to create a "better package". Our labor, which has always been a commodity to be bought and sold, is no longer anything more than the regurgitation of that which we consume from the market for professional skills.
In example, the person who knows the ins and outs of their job is rarer and rarer to encounter. Instead we have high turnover, and, as you mention, continual progress in which we fundamentally change our skillsets and areas of expertise in order to convince companies to consume our skills.
But I see what you mean. Although I don't think it's a problem with the commercialisation of skill (that is an inevitability as teaching gets better) but more a problem with employment structure.
We still end up with the practical issue of the fact that American legislators are so far in the pocket of the market that actual reform is impossible.
Isn't COBOL still widespread in banking?
I keep hearing that our culture is entitled as shit, mostly the young people, but from my point of view its the boomers that are entitled fuckwads at this point, because they worked hard so its fine letting everything else burn as long as their retirement and health care are secure.
Anyway, I'm going to have to go with [CITATION NEEDED] on any group except teenagers largely thinking they'll be handed a job and making a fortune just by getting a degree, because anecdotally that's not at all what I see day to day
There is an feeling of deserving somewhat of a shot and not every job requiring 5-8 years of experience.
The problem is, we need to spend that 80k to do what people 20 years ago could just decide they wanted to. The education just gets us in the door at an entry level. Yes, you're probably completely screwed if you didnt have that education to get that entry level spot. But our parents and grandparents didnt have that problem. They didnt have to start off their adult lives at -80k. When you look at it that way, its understandable our generation is a little peeved.
Theres this secret code where that people who dropped out of college/high school have to give other people who dropped out a chance at entry level positions. All I'm gonna say.
I'm not saying the previous generation had it easy, but this culture of strangling people with debt before they even start working is ridiculous.
I think it's more the younger generation feels entitled to a job a fucking trained monkey couldn't do.
There are very few jobs available that require any actual creativity or thought. And funnily enough, the least creative jobs go to the Uneducated and the Overeducated (ie - people with useless University degrees).
Or, perhaps the better way to approach the problem is to look at what has changed in our culture and society that requires a college education in order to get a decent job.
A good place to start is in education standards (numbers) and looking at who benefits.
The loss of manufacturing, I'd guess. Define "decent job".
People in developing countries can't go back to living in their "mudhuts" since America has been exporting cheap food for decades now. It's no longer profitable to continue farming and having them become dependent on us for their way of life definitely has it drawbacks like the food crisis that happened when we stopped importing cheap crops and decided to use a lot of our excess corn to make ethanol.
What I'm proposing is that instead of exploiting other nations for their exports we begin to pay them a reasonable price for them and help in building sustainable infrastructure since I'm sure there's a profit in it.