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I hope I'm wrong, but I suspect this is an intractable change in our economy. I also have another feeling (in which I once again hope I'm wrong) that a solution

I hope I'm wrong, but I suspect this is an intractable change in our economy. I also have another feeling (in which I once again hope I'm wrong) that a solution to said issue won't come until a lot of pain has been dealt out.

beachstartup 11y ago
you're not wrong at all. it's clear that modern life/economy is too much for some people to deal with, and we as a society are learning how to cope with that. quite frankly the modern world is turning into a freakshow of epic proportions. media, social and otherwise, reflects that. i say this as a libertarian -- we're going to have to come to some kind of socialist equilibrium, or else people are just going to keep eliminating themselves, quickly or slowly. i think a lot of people just don't care if it continues.
- nibs 11y ago
  I think the flipside of this is that the capital class has the responsibility to deploy the capital in a way that it drives the cost of living down. We need more companies that do more with less (technology in classical sense) instead of less with more (more overpaid people accomplishing little meaningful work). Also, food keeps going up so much in price, I assume for a lot of people inflation is much higher than stated, because gas prices assume they have a car.
  - simplemath 11y ago
    That simply wont happen until capital holders are forced to divest themselves of their capital. Pooling of capital at the extreme right tail of the bell curve is accelerating, not decelerating.
  - aianus 11y ago
    > Also, food keeps going up so much in price, I assume for a lot of people inflation is much higher than stated, because gas prices assume they have a car. Core inflation numbers do not include food or energy costs.
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
Slavoj Zizek said, "It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." I think he should have also added, "or, nowadays, the reform of capitalism". I may be a seize-the-means-of-production socialist, but I acknowledge that managed capitalism in its Keynesian and social-democratic forms has actually existed and actually worked. What I find weird, a kind of ideological brainwashing on whole populations, is how nobody else to my Right acknowledges this. Everyone seems to pretend that the transition in the '70s-'90s from social democracy to full neoliberalism (ie: privatization, financialization, offshoring of industries, strengthening of intellectual-property laws over the industrial power of physical producers of physical goods) was some kind of mechanistic historical inevitability, as irreversible as gravity or entropy. The misery and suffering of our people will stop as soon as we stop considering it inevitable and remember the dozens to hundreds of things we can do about it without even having to take riskily radical measures!

beachstartup 11y ago

you're not wrong at all. it's clear that modern life/economy is too much for some people to deal with, and we as a society are learning how to cope with that. quite frankly the modern world is turning into a freakshow of epic proportions. media, social and otherwise, reflects that. i say this as a libertarian -- we're going to have to come to some kind of socialist equilibrium, or else people are just going to keep eliminating themselves, quickly or slowly. i think a lot of people just don't care if it continues.

nibs 11y ago
I think the flipside of this is that the capital class has the responsibility to deploy the capital in a way that it drives the cost of living down. We need more companies that do more with less (technology in classical sense) instead of less with more (more overpaid people accomplishing little meaningful work). Also, food keeps going up so much in price, I assume for a lot of people inflation is much higher than stated, because gas prices assume they have a car.
- simplemath 11y ago
  That simply wont happen until capital holders are forced to divest themselves of their capital. Pooling of capital at the extreme right tail of the bell curve is accelerating, not decelerating.
- aianus 11y ago
  > Also, food keeps going up so much in price, I assume for a lot of people inflation is much higher than stated, because gas prices assume they have a car. Core inflation numbers do not include food or energy costs.

eli_gottlieb 11y ago

Slavoj Zizek said, "It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." I think he should have also added, "or, nowadays, the reform of capitalism". I may be a seize-the-means-of-production socialist, but I acknowledge that managed capitalism in its Keynesian and social-democratic forms has actually existed and actually worked. What I find weird, a kind of ideological brainwashing on whole populations, is how nobody else to my Right acknowledges this. Everyone seems to pretend that the transition in the '70s-'90s from social democracy to full neoliberalism (ie: privatization, financialization, offshoring of industries, strengthening of intellectual-property laws over the industrial power of physical producers of physical goods) was some kind of mechanistic historical inevitability, as irreversible as gravity or entropy. The misery and suffering of our people will stop as soon as we stop considering it inevitable and remember the dozens to hundreds of things we can do about it without even having to take riskily radical measures!