11 ms·

The deep roots of modern resentment

103 points by dashboard 10y ago

guard-of-terra 10y ago
Unfortunately this article doesn't penetrate this extremelly important topic. It doesn't arrive anywhere. > Ceaseless change gave birth to liberalism, which, for all the mistakes made in its name, continues to adapt. Despite those mistakes, it remains the best response today. I mean, seriously? That's proof by assertion.
- akkartik 10y ago
  It's the Economist. Quotes like this are par for the course: "..in Iraq and Syria, where what used to be called the civilising hand has proven incapable of stemming the bloodshed." I read it for the data (in this case the stated facts about the book being reviewed) and try to filter out the editorializing.
- ewood 10y ago
  Before you get angry, you probably need to read the other 404 pages of the essay.
- iak8god 10y ago
  This "article" is a book review. The author of the review is trying in 1200 words to give the reader of this review a sense for what the 400+ page book is about -- not to present a compelling and penetrating argument for any particular point of view.
  - guard-of-terra 10y ago
    This means I don't like book reviews on HN, that's like paywall but worse.
- joyeuse6701 10y ago
  it's a book review.
dandare 10y ago
Sometimes I feel like the more has been achieved by western liberalism the more is it being criticized for not magically fixing everything there is to be fixed. Coincidentally those who criticize it never offer alternative realistic solutions.
- EekSnakePond 10y ago
  Yes we do. It's just those who have benefited from this arrangement the most happen to also control the relationships that power mass media, which is then used to undermine alternative solutions as "racist", "sexist" and "evil" with no evidence whatsoever and immediately engage in mob swarming and plebeian intimidation. For example: Western Liberalism absolutely requires cheap brown people. (And that deep reliance ABSOLUTELY makes supporters of Western liberalism completely racist) If you make cheap brown people as expensive as Western natives, why do you need cheap brown people? And if you have "good-enough" AI, why do you need either?
  - compiler-guy 10y ago
    This is another criticism, not an alternative proposal. Please give an alternative proposal.
    - crdoconnor 10y ago
      Raise the minimum wage to $20/hour. Watch as "serious economists" lie about: * All of the jobs that will actually not disappear. * All of the prices that will actually not rise (by much). And try really really hard to pretend that: * Raising the minimum wage doesn't channel profits into the pockets of workers. What surprises me isn't that they lie. What surprises me is that people continue to believe them.
      - thebokehwokeh2 10y ago
        > Raise the minimum wage to $20/hour. I don't know how you came to the conclusion of western liberalism being against raising the minimum wage when it's been a core tenet of their platforms for over a decade now. But to $20 an hour is something neither liberal nor conservative has EVER advocated for as until there is a public uproar for it, both will always side with corporate interests. That said, your proposition is an alternative solution that I have never heard anyone of actual influence from either side of the political spectrum (outside of Sanders) ever bring up.
EekSnakePond 10y ago
Ladies and gentlemen: Exhibit A. I say (and deeply imply): > Make cheap brown people as expensive as Western natives And he says "That's a criticism, not a proposal" Supporters of Western liberalism LITERALLY cannot detect alternative proposals, even when you put it immediately in their face. Even when you spell it out to them. They're just too high on sacred cows and moral supremacy.
- compiler-guy 10y ago
  That isn't a proposal to replace capitalism, that is a small detail of a proposal. A single sentence that is a kernel of an idea (and probably a good one), but far from a sufficient argument. Please give an alternative proposal. A link is fine.
  - EekSnakePond 10y ago
    > That isn't a proposal to replace capitalism Put down the Marxism for 5 seconds and follow my original premise all the way to it's logical end. - Make the slaves as expensive as the natives. - Why would you need slaves in this scenario? - You wouldn't. - If slaves and natives are equal cost, then machines are given incentives to outperform both. - Western liberalism is completely flipped on its head in a world where humans can never compete against machine labor. There is your solution. Close the slave/native arbitrage, let machines compete. This is where you opine about protecting your sacred cows.
    - ChuckMcM 10y ago
      And here is the challenge of that suggestion; what mechanism do you propose to "make them equally expensive" ? There are many things you can 'say' but not 'do', for example 'write the largest integer on this piece of paper'. That is easy to say, and it sounds easy, just put a number down on a piece of paper, but the number requested is not representable and so the suggestion is actually impossible. Your statement "Make the slaves as expensive as the natives" has exactly this quality. And so any follow on argument is moot. Tell us how to accomplish that and we can debate what policy would make that real.
jankotek 10y ago
Elites are really closed in their own bubble. "Nihilists" and terrorist attacks :-(
known 10y ago
Voting in elections is hegemony, NOT democracy due to economist.com/node/21715555/
jwhitlark 10y ago
It took >100,000 years for humans to spread across the globe. Reuniting them in a far shorter span of time was always going to be a messy process. I'm not saying we're doing everything right, I'm just saying it's amazing that we're able to do it at all.
rdtsc 10y ago
Interestingly it was specifically leftist thinkers and personalities who have been against globalization as promoted by free-market capitalism. That might seems shocking in light of recent election rhetoric. https://chomsky.info/secrets03/ https://chomsky.info/secrets03/ --- About half of what are called US exports to Mexico are intrafirm transfers of this sort. They don’t enter the Mexican market, and there’s no meaningful sense in which they’re exports to Mexico. Still, that’s called "trade." --- This interview by Sanders on Vox is also very illustrative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5vOKKMipSA&t=352 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5vOKKMipSA&t=352 --- Bernie Sanders: Open borders? No, that's a Koch brothers proposal. Ezra Klein: Really? Bernie Sanders: Of course. That's a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States. ... --- It is sad really. People keep calling those who voted and promoted Hillary "the left" but there is not much "left" left in there. Trump apparently took the traditional bread-and-butter leftist issues NAFTA and jobs and ran with it. Whether he cares for those things or not, at least he picked them up. So the Democrats ended up with identity politics, mixed with corporatism. They are trying to appeal to Occupy Wall St. and also give $200k speeches to Wall St., they are for gay rights but also take donations from states which throw gays off of buildings. It was rather upsetting when during the nightclub shooting in Orlando, Hillary's campaign and the rest of the media moved quickly to suppress the news because it involved a what apparently an Islamic Terrorist attack. I know a few gay people who never quite got over that and never forgot it... Moreover on identity politics and the left. Has Marx never wrote anything about labeling groups correctly so they don't get offended? It was always about being very offended, specifically offending the ownership class and not just offending them, but annihilating them. Maybe one good thing about Trump winning is that it cleared the table for creation of a new political party. A more authentic left party. Those people who followed Sanders what happened to them? There such tremendous energy there. Is it wasted on boycotting Uber, and re-tweeting the same things over and over... I am afraid it is.
- the_duke 10y ago
  Just a few years back, it was the Conservative parties (not just the US) advocating Globalisation/free trade/free markets yadda yadda, and the liberals opposing the above because of labour exploitation, global supply chains bad for the environment... But memories fade quickly... Then again, Trump's positions are really not so representative of the establishment republicans.
basicplus2 10y ago
There are fundamental beliefs and strictural issues which are present in any system that allow a few to own and control a majority of the worlds assets and income, and that do not value all people equally, that need to be changed. To start to fix some of these issues in the Western System, one of the first steps that is required to take is to only allow all company and trust entity shares and interests to be owned SOLEY by REAL PERSONS, and all such owenership should be public knowledge.
coding123 10y ago
I think there are two major ways liberals and conservatives think. Liberals tend to come up with solutions to problems they see over and over again. Conservatives are more like, hey look at Joe, he needs some help, can someone get him food and see why he's doing so poorly. It's odd, but when you think about systems vs single solutions, liberals like to think of the "systemic solution" so it doesn't happen again. A Factory explodes? Regulation is the answer. A baby is switched at birth? We need much more complicated computer systems to track babies. etc... Conservatives are more like, oh shit, that WONT happen again, we promise. And likely it doesn't or rarely does. I'm not really arguing which of these routes is better here, but I see more and more that these opposite ways of thinking is the crux of our anti-trusting of the other side. I think the only way they will is if we, as a people, try to sit in each other's shoes more. What's funny as an interesting parable, I see the liberal route of making rules (to save lives, stop mis-matched babies) as procedural/imperative programming. The conservative route of simply fixing the problems that went wrong as a social fix as a machine learning.
diego_moita 10y ago
As a Latin American this is very ironic and surprising. Latin America is painfully emerging from an age of populism fed by resentment (e.g.: Kirchner in Argentina, PT/Lula in Brazil, Chavismo in Venezuela). The economic policies being proposed by Trump (protectionism, discretionary subsidies for corporations, big spending...) are precisely the main cause of our misery. The fact that the developed world is flirting with the disaster we are trying to fix is astonishing.
Animats 10y ago
It's our fault, in tech. We've created a world where there's no good role for anyone with an IQ below 100. That's half the population. This is a new thing in history. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, there were more smart people than jobs for them. Strength and robustness were more valued than brainpower. That lasted well into the 20th century. The big change started during WWII. For the first time, war started to become more technical and bureaucratic than macho. There had always been some military heavy thinkers, but only a few were needed, at command and general staff level. In WWII, there were a lot more people turning knobs, reading dials, making calculations, and writing plans, and they were moving up in authority. Post-WWII, there was enough work for everybody for a while. But automation and mechanization were starting to be widely deployed. A milestone was reached in 1974, when auto companies in Detroit started requiring a high school diploma for new hires. Until then, they'd hire anyone who could tighten a bolt, and paid well enough that employees could afford a house, car, and family. 1974 was the peak year for the American working class. It's been a slow downhill slide since then for people with high school diplomas and less. This was all before computers were widely available. Computers accelerated this process, but more than that, they broadened it. Detroit was highly automated by the 1970s. Now almost every business can be. Businesses that couldn't keep up went under. The US is full of abandoned factories in small towns and cities. This has taken away the support system which provided stability, and prosperity in the developed world. That's where Trump voters came from. The system betrayed them. Of course they're angry.
- martincmartin 10y ago
  Then how do you explain earlier bouts of populism, like Huey Long? Liberalism has had its challengers ever since it existed.
pklausler 10y ago
As a liberal, I have to admit to feeling stung by ingratitude for 2009. Rust-belt auto workers ain't ever getting bailed out again.
peterashford 10y ago
I think the problem isn't liberalism, per se, but neo liberalism. The fact that the market hasn't made for an egalitarian society, but one that is markedly lopsided in terms of distribution of wealth. THAT is a problem, but not necessarily one that requires demolishing liberalism, democracy nor capitalism.

103 points by dashboard 10y ago

Unfortunately this article doesn't penetrate this extremelly important topic. It doesn't arrive anywhere. > Ceaseless change gave birth to liberalism, which, for all the mistakes made in its name, continues to adapt. Despite those mistakes, it remains the best response today. I mean, seriously? That's proof by assertion.

akkartik 10y ago
It's the Economist. Quotes like this are par for the course: "..in Iraq and Syria, where what used to be called the civilising hand has proven incapable of stemming the bloodshed." I read it for the data (in this case the stated facts about the book being reviewed) and try to filter out the editorializing.
ewood 10y ago
Before you get angry, you probably need to read the other 404 pages of the essay.
iak8god 10y ago
This "article" is a book review. The author of the review is trying in 1200 words to give the reader of this review a sense for what the 400+ page book is about -- not to present a compelling and penetrating argument for any particular point of view.
- guard-of-terra 10y ago
  This means I don't like book reviews on HN, that's like paywall but worse.
joyeuse6701 10y ago
it's a book review.

dandare 10y ago

Sometimes I feel like the more has been achieved by western liberalism the more is it being criticized for not magically fixing everything there is to be fixed. Coincidentally those who criticize it never offer alternative realistic solutions.

EekSnakePond 10y ago
Yes we do. It's just those who have benefited from this arrangement the most happen to also control the relationships that power mass media, which is then used to undermine alternative solutions as "racist", "sexist" and "evil" with no evidence whatsoever and immediately engage in mob swarming and plebeian intimidation. For example: Western Liberalism absolutely requires cheap brown people. (And that deep reliance ABSOLUTELY makes supporters of Western liberalism completely racist) If you make cheap brown people as expensive as Western natives, why do you need cheap brown people? And if you have "good-enough" AI, why do you need either?
- compiler-guy 10y ago
  This is another criticism, not an alternative proposal. Please give an alternative proposal.
  - crdoconnor 10y ago
    Raise the minimum wage to $20/hour. Watch as "serious economists" lie about: * All of the jobs that will actually not disappear. * All of the prices that will actually not rise (by much). And try really really hard to pretend that: * Raising the minimum wage doesn't channel profits into the pockets of workers. What surprises me isn't that they lie. What surprises me is that people continue to believe them.
    - thebokehwokeh2 10y ago
      > Raise the minimum wage to $20/hour. I don't know how you came to the conclusion of western liberalism being against raising the minimum wage when it's been a core tenet of their platforms for over a decade now. But to $20 an hour is something neither liberal nor conservative has EVER advocated for as until there is a public uproar for it, both will always side with corporate interests. That said, your proposition is an alternative solution that I have never heard anyone of actual influence from either side of the political spectrum (outside of Sanders) ever bring up.

EekSnakePond 10y ago

Ladies and gentlemen: Exhibit A. I say (and deeply imply): > Make cheap brown people as expensive as Western natives And he says "That's a criticism, not a proposal" Supporters of Western liberalism LITERALLY cannot detect alternative proposals, even when you put it immediately in their face. Even when you spell it out to them. They're just too high on sacred cows and moral supremacy.

compiler-guy 10y ago
That isn't a proposal to replace capitalism, that is a small detail of a proposal. A single sentence that is a kernel of an idea (and probably a good one), but far from a sufficient argument. Please give an alternative proposal. A link is fine.
- EekSnakePond 10y ago
  > That isn't a proposal to replace capitalism Put down the Marxism for 5 seconds and follow my original premise all the way to it's logical end. - Make the slaves as expensive as the natives. - Why would you need slaves in this scenario? - You wouldn't. - If slaves and natives are equal cost, then machines are given incentives to outperform both. - Western liberalism is completely flipped on its head in a world where humans can never compete against machine labor. There is your solution. Close the slave/native arbitrage, let machines compete. This is where you opine about protecting your sacred cows.
  - ChuckMcM 10y ago
    And here is the challenge of that suggestion; what mechanism do you propose to "make them equally expensive" ? There are many things you can 'say' but not 'do', for example 'write the largest integer on this piece of paper'. That is easy to say, and it sounds easy, just put a number down on a piece of paper, but the number requested is not representable and so the suggestion is actually impossible. Your statement "Make the slaves as expensive as the natives" has exactly this quality. And so any follow on argument is moot. Tell us how to accomplish that and we can debate what policy would make that real.

jankotek 10y ago

Elites are really closed in their own bubble. "Nihilists" and terrorist attacks :-(

known 10y ago

Voting in elections is hegemony, NOT democracy due to economist.com/node/21715555/

jwhitlark 10y ago

It took >100,000 years for humans to spread across the globe. Reuniting them in a far shorter span of time was always going to be a messy process. I'm not saying we're doing everything right, I'm just saying it's amazing that we're able to do it at all.

rdtsc 10y ago

Interestingly it was specifically leftist thinkers and personalities who have been against globalization as promoted by free-market capitalism. That might seems shocking in light of recent election rhetoric. https://chomsky.info/secrets03/ https://chomsky.info/secrets03/ --- About half of what are called US exports to Mexico are intrafirm transfers of this sort. They don’t enter the Mexican market, and there’s no meaningful sense in which they’re exports to Mexico. Still, that’s called "trade." --- This interview by Sanders on Vox is also very illustrative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5vOKKMipSA&t=352 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5vOKKMipSA&t=352 --- Bernie Sanders: Open borders? No, that's a Koch brothers proposal. Ezra Klein: Really? Bernie Sanders: Of course. That's a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States. ... --- It is sad really. People keep calling those who voted and promoted Hillary "the left" but there is not much "left" left in there. Trump apparently took the traditional bread-and-butter leftist issues NAFTA and jobs and ran with it. Whether he cares for those things or not, at least he picked them up. So the Democrats ended up with identity politics, mixed with corporatism. They are trying to appeal to Occupy Wall St. and also give $200k speeches to Wall St., they are for gay rights but also take donations from states which throw gays off of buildings. It was rather upsetting when during the nightclub shooting in Orlando, Hillary's campaign and the rest of the media moved quickly to suppress the news because it involved a what apparently an Islamic Terrorist attack. I know a few gay people who never quite got over that and never forgot it... Moreover on identity politics and the left. Has Marx never wrote anything about labeling groups correctly so they don't get offended? It was always about being very offended, specifically offending the ownership class and not just offending them, but annihilating them. Maybe one good thing about Trump winning is that it cleared the table for creation of a new political party. A more authentic left party. Those people who followed Sanders what happened to them? There such tremendous energy there. Is it wasted on boycotting Uber, and re-tweeting the same things over and over... I am afraid it is.

the_duke 10y ago
Just a few years back, it was the Conservative parties (not just the US) advocating Globalisation/free trade/free markets yadda yadda, and the liberals opposing the above because of labour exploitation, global supply chains bad for the environment... But memories fade quickly... Then again, Trump's positions are really not so representative of the establishment republicans.

basicplus2 10y ago

There are fundamental beliefs and strictural issues which are present in any system that allow a few to own and control a majority of the worlds assets and income, and that do not value all people equally, that need to be changed. To start to fix some of these issues in the Western System, one of the first steps that is required to take is to only allow all company and trust entity shares and interests to be owned SOLEY by REAL PERSONS, and all such owenership should be public knowledge.

coding123 10y ago

I think there are two major ways liberals and conservatives think. Liberals tend to come up with solutions to problems they see over and over again. Conservatives are more like, hey look at Joe, he needs some help, can someone get him food and see why he's doing so poorly. It's odd, but when you think about systems vs single solutions, liberals like to think of the "systemic solution" so it doesn't happen again. A Factory explodes? Regulation is the answer. A baby is switched at birth? We need much more complicated computer systems to track babies. etc... Conservatives are more like, oh shit, that WONT happen again, we promise. And likely it doesn't or rarely does. I'm not really arguing which of these routes is better here, but I see more and more that these opposite ways of thinking is the crux of our anti-trusting of the other side. I think the only way they will is if we, as a people, try to sit in each other's shoes more. What's funny as an interesting parable, I see the liberal route of making rules (to save lives, stop mis-matched babies) as procedural/imperative programming. The conservative route of simply fixing the problems that went wrong as a social fix as a machine learning.

diego_moita 10y ago

As a Latin American this is very ironic and surprising. Latin America is painfully emerging from an age of populism fed by resentment (e.g.: Kirchner in Argentina, PT/Lula in Brazil, Chavismo in Venezuela). The economic policies being proposed by Trump (protectionism, discretionary subsidies for corporations, big spending...) are precisely the main cause of our misery. The fact that the developed world is flirting with the disaster we are trying to fix is astonishing.

Animats 10y ago

It's our fault, in tech. We've created a world where there's no good role for anyone with an IQ below 100. That's half the population. This is a new thing in history. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, there were more smart people than jobs for them. Strength and robustness were more valued than brainpower. That lasted well into the 20th century. The big change started during WWII. For the first time, war started to become more technical and bureaucratic than macho. There had always been some military heavy thinkers, but only a few were needed, at command and general staff level. In WWII, there were a lot more people turning knobs, reading dials, making calculations, and writing plans, and they were moving up in authority. Post-WWII, there was enough work for everybody for a while. But automation and mechanization were starting to be widely deployed. A milestone was reached in 1974, when auto companies in Detroit started requiring a high school diploma for new hires. Until then, they'd hire anyone who could tighten a bolt, and paid well enough that employees could afford a house, car, and family. 1974 was the peak year for the American working class. It's been a slow downhill slide since then for people with high school diplomas and less. This was all before computers were widely available. Computers accelerated this process, but more than that, they broadened it. Detroit was highly automated by the 1970s. Now almost every business can be. Businesses that couldn't keep up went under. The US is full of abandoned factories in small towns and cities. This has taken away the support system which provided stability, and prosperity in the developed world. That's where Trump voters came from. The system betrayed them. Of course they're angry.

martincmartin 10y ago
Then how do you explain earlier bouts of populism, like Huey Long? Liberalism has had its challengers ever since it existed.

pklausler 10y ago

As a liberal, I have to admit to feeling stung by ingratitude for 2009. Rust-belt auto workers ain't ever getting bailed out again.

peterashford 10y ago

I think the problem isn't liberalism, per se, but neo liberalism. The fact that the market hasn't made for an egalitarian society, but one that is markedly lopsided in terms of distribution of wealth. THAT is a problem, but not necessarily one that requires demolishing liberalism, democracy nor capitalism.