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I wasn't trying to be obtuse. I fully acknowledge that greed is one of the forces ripping the society to shreds. However, people act in what they misperceive to

I wasn't trying to be obtuse. I fully acknowledge that greed is one of the forces ripping the society to shreds. However, people act in what they misperceive to be their best interests all the time. If your scenario comes to pass, then it will be flatly impossible to have anything close to a stable society. The rich do not become rich and stay rich in a vacuum. Maybe some of them think they didn't act on a platform or that they don't need society but if things start to fall apart and the safety net goes from frayed to ripped, the situation can go from bad to worse very fast and keep going. These lobbyists you speak of and those who fund them can be dethroned in the next wave of populism to hit. The next wave might come from the left, might come from the right, or might just hit as a nihilistic spasm. The order that you describe above is there based on an illusion. I'm not trying to make some mystical claim. Pull a bill from your wallet. Try to eat it. What's it worth? It's worth money because of a tacit agreement on its value. There's no inherent value in that $5. Go to the campus of a University. Why is that place University and not the park down the block? Because we've agreed and yes made laws to protect that designation and the professors and students show up at one and not the other but it's not objective reality woven into the fabric of the universe. There's a lot of assumptions and agreements in almost everything that's part of civilization, including the details of the order that you described above. That you will always have electricity, water, and enough to eat are also not written in stone either. Nobody who really understood some history, I mean feels it beyond mere abstraction, would say a destabilizing word in public or try to stir anyone else to act against stability. This person would have a broader understanding of their own interests. They would never advocate for authoritarianism as they'd grok Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, etc., etc. I am not saying that it's even close to guaranteed that civilization will pull off survival nor do I have any clue how fast we are sliding and how much acceleration is to come and when. Nobody does. But I think it would be foolish for smart people to not consider this with an open mind. To act in time I think will require some persuasion because if this idea is forced to wait until it can sell itself, then conditions will have deteriorated to the point where even those deep in denial will feel it. Reality can hit hard and fast. I'm not saying you personally think things are just fine as I can't imagine anyone on HN who is not at least aware of the inevitability of a growing gap between those who need to work to survive and the number of jobs. Further, I'm sure you're aware there are millions who are not going to be even close to ready to survive through their retirements. If this all comes together with a malevolent or just clueless demagogue then things could get a whole lot worse, a whole lot faster. I hope people are watching and learning and can put aside whatever ideology they currently cling to because those ideologies are just hindrances to clear thinking.

Clubber 10y ago
Great comments. I understand your comments on money, but I suspect other modern economies will fair the weather much better than the US. The US wealthy have diversified their wealth in physical assets, gold, foreign currencies, etc; things that have intrinsic value outside of the US. Not only that, they can continue to manufacture in foreign lands and sell to foreign markets. Capital is mobile, labor is not. What they almost certainly won't do is voluntarily give their wealth, without a fight, to combat mass unemployment. They will lobby hard against it (my original thought) or just leave the country. The Great Depression saw a peak unemployment at around 25%. That took 10+ years, some arguably unconstitutional laws and a massive, global war effort (with destruction of many competing economies) to get out of. That was in a time period when both the political parties actually wanted to solve the problem. In the worst case scenario, with near complete automation and offshore labor, you'll be looking at around 75-90% unemployment in the US in a fairly rapid time period (10-20 years?). We've never seen anything like it; not that quickly. I'd like to think we would figure out how to adapt, but we've had a serious political discussion about climate change for going on 10 years now, and the US has barely come around to agreeing it exists and is man caused (and I'm being generous) let alone an actionable plan to retard it, let alone reverse it. This denial and inaction is caused by the very same forces that will cause inertia when figuring out how to combat a US economy that can't support a fraction of the workforce. We recently had the worst financial crisis since the great depression. Who got bailed out and who didn't? I understand why we needed to bail out the banks, but about the only thing the average homeowner got was weak refinancing laws that were abused by the wealthy banks! Furthermore, we haven't taken any serious measures to prevent it from happening again. What measures we did manage to take (Dodd-Frank) are constantly being picked away by those same forces. We've had middle class wage stagnation for going on 30 years now and the electorate keeps voting for people who do things to perpetuate and accelerate that stagnation (both parties), thanks in part to misinformation and secrecy funded by those same forces. As far as political shakeups, Occupy Wall Street did nothing. The Tea Party was absorbed then gradually extinguished by the GOP. The most recent political shakeup the US electorate could come up with was electing Trump. I don't have high hopes about him solving our upcoming economic problems either. What we've been through in the last 10 or so years isn't even the scary part if my dire prediction comes to fruition. I don't think our political system is healthy enough to deal with what might be coming. PS: This was a lot longer winded than I anticipated, so apologies if it reads all over the place.

Clubber 10y ago

Great comments. I understand your comments on money, but I suspect other modern economies will fair the weather much better than the US. The US wealthy have diversified their wealth in physical assets, gold, foreign currencies, etc; things that have intrinsic value outside of the US. Not only that, they can continue to manufacture in foreign lands and sell to foreign markets. Capital is mobile, labor is not. What they almost certainly won't do is voluntarily give their wealth, without a fight, to combat mass unemployment. They will lobby hard against it (my original thought) or just leave the country. The Great Depression saw a peak unemployment at around 25%. That took 10+ years, some arguably unconstitutional laws and a massive, global war effort (with destruction of many competing economies) to get out of. That was in a time period when both the political parties actually wanted to solve the problem. In the worst case scenario, with near complete automation and offshore labor, you'll be looking at around 75-90% unemployment in the US in a fairly rapid time period (10-20 years?). We've never seen anything like it; not that quickly. I'd like to think we would figure out how to adapt, but we've had a serious political discussion about climate change for going on 10 years now, and the US has barely come around to agreeing it exists and is man caused (and I'm being generous) let alone an actionable plan to retard it, let alone reverse it. This denial and inaction is caused by the very same forces that will cause inertia when figuring out how to combat a US economy that can't support a fraction of the workforce. We recently had the worst financial crisis since the great depression. Who got bailed out and who didn't? I understand why we needed to bail out the banks, but about the only thing the average homeowner got was weak refinancing laws that were abused by the wealthy banks! Furthermore, we haven't taken any serious measures to prevent it from happening again. What measures we did manage to take (Dodd-Frank) are constantly being picked away by those same forces. We've had middle class wage stagnation for going on 30 years now and the electorate keeps voting for people who do things to perpetuate and accelerate that stagnation (both parties), thanks in part to misinformation and secrecy funded by those same forces. As far as political shakeups, Occupy Wall Street did nothing. The Tea Party was absorbed then gradually extinguished by the GOP. The most recent political shakeup the US electorate could come up with was electing Trump. I don't have high hopes about him solving our upcoming economic problems either. What we've been through in the last 10 or so years isn't even the scary part if my dire prediction comes to fruition. I don't think our political system is healthy enough to deal with what might be coming. PS: This was a lot longer winded than I anticipated, so apologies if it reads all over the place.