4 ms·

Indeed; I think people are out of ideas. "Right-thinking" people continue to believe in liberalizing economies, globalism and so on, and they've yet to come to

by barrkel 10y ago

Indeed; I think people are out of ideas. "Right-thinking" people continue to believe in liberalizing economies, globalism and so on, and they've yet to come to terms with the backlash that's fueling people like Trump, UKIP / Brexit, Le Pen, and so on. There's no alternative idea on the horizon; we know socialism isn't very effective at much more than rent capture and corruption, and we know nationalism / protectionism ultimately makes economies non-competitive globally. But we don't have a solution to the problem of global capital chasing efficiency globally, and thereby hollowing out the middle of the income distribution in Western economies. A lot of ideas have been discredited, or at least played out. But there's still a constituency for those ideas, and there will continue to be until the orthodox "elites" come to terms with what's going on. (And they're not really elites; I count myself as one of them, as skilled developers are not at immediate risk of being outsourced and are not strongly bound to any one country. I'm still winning from the current economic system. But I can see that it can't continue, the majority won't stand for it.)

charlesdm 10y ago
Isn't this just a problem of living in an efficient, globalised society? In an efficient global economy, most of the middle class won't be required, because frankly, most of those jobs are useless and shouldn't even exist in the first place. We'll need the "low level" jobs, e.g. cleaners. Given the cost of automation, it's just not interesting enough to automate this. We'll also need the high level jobs, e.g. anything that requires significant (creative) thinking to some extent. Unique creative thought is probably the only thing that can't be automated at the moment. Most traditional middle class jobs can easily be simplified / removed / etc. For each job that's created in software development, two traditional ones will disappear. We're optimising the world. Tl;dr: Most people, imo, haven't realised the world is changing. The people voting Trump / UKIP / Brexit / Le Pen are (unless someone gives me a good argument) fools for thinking the people they elect can actually change things. I'm not saying they haven't been left behind, or there are no legit concerns, but to think these people can change things.. that's just ridiculous. For example: I dare say Trump doesn't give a flying fuck about what he had to do to get elected. He picked out 5 or 10 focus groups that would give him the necessary votes to win, and focused on those. He won't deliver. He just wanted to be president.
- slurry 10y ago
  Your comment assumes that Trump/Brexit/Le Pen voters are trying to "do something" with their votes. What if they're just trying to do as much damage as possible, knowing the system has it out for them?
- golemotron 10y ago
  > For example: I dare say Trump doesn't give a flying fuck about what he had to do to get elected. He picked out 5 or 10 focus groups that would give him the necessary votes to win, and focused on those. He won't deliver. He just wanted to be president. It's weird that we tend to assume people are stupid or disingenuous when we disagree with them. Trump has been on the receiving end of a lot of that and in the case of economics it's easily debunked. He was a supporter of Ross Perot in the 90s, and nearly ran for Perot's Reform party. For those too young to remember, Perot's primary issue was protection for American jobs. The interesting is that, as international businessmen, both Perot and Trump were in more of a position to make money internationally than under the protectionist rules they pushed. When you realize that it looks a little less like self-interest. There are many reasons to dislike Trump but it doesn't do any good to minimize him. In fact, it's counter-productive. You counter your opponent by really knowing him.
DonaldFisk 10y ago
I had originally assumed that the Leave vote in the UK EU referendum was a protest against neoliberalism, but now I'm beginning to wonder. In a few weeks, voters in the UK will have the option of voting for a party (Labour) which now opposes neoliberalism, but it's well-behind in the opinion polls. Even if all the progressive votes (Labour, Lib Dems, SNP/Plaid Cymru, Greens) are aggregated, they're still outnumbered by the combined Tory and UKIP vote. I'm beginning to wonder if support for Brexit was mostly just xenophobia, but not many people like to admit to that.
- barrkel 10y ago
  The election at this point is about nationalism, and is being compounded by an Us-vs-Them narrative as played out (and played up) with the dinner debacle. People who wouldn't normally vote Tory will vote for May because they want to rally around what they perceive as a strong leader against the Other. Obviously with the dinner debacle the EU side's motive was to inject some realism about the weakness of Britain's hand, but May played it the only way she could have. Britain didn't learn the full lesson from World War II: that nationalism is actually a bad thing. Its approach to Europe has been wrong all throughout as a result, and it's compounded by being joined at the hip to US foreign policy. But everywhere else in the world is growing economically, and the West is shrinking as a slice of the overall pie, and this will naturally add to the continuing decline in the US's ability to project its will. The EU is also about creating a larger centre of gravity able to negotiate as an equal to China and the US. It'll take some time for the UK to realize how lonely it is on the outside, especially as protectionism increases - fewer friendly ports on the open sea, and bigger sharks - it's not the best time to be setting sail alone.
  - ygaf 10y ago
    While lazily throwing it out there that nationalism is bad, you do acknowledge the benefit of... continentialism?
    - barrkel 10y ago
      Joining a group means taking some responsibility for its governance and good running. Too many politicians use Brussels as a scapegoat, rather than something they own a piece of. So in so far as continentalism refers to an agglomeration of different peoples trying to speak with one voice, like US, China, Russia, EU - the thing only works if people don't get too cynical about the centre. I don't think there's much alternative to joining a larger political entity if you're geographically near one, given what we know about economic links and distances. A possible advantage of something like the EU is that it doesn't have a cohesive enough identity to think nationalistically and get into trouble that way.
fictioncircle 10y ago
> But we don't have a solution to the problem of global capital chasing efficiency globally, and thereby hollowing out the middle of the income distribution in Western economies. It isn't a solvable problem, honestly, is the big secret no one really wants to admit. Capitalism, by its nature, is going to chase efficiency globally regardless of what you do to prevent it. Technology, over time, is going to make this worse because it is easier to avoid inconvenient regulations by operating out of "friendly" countries as well as enabling automation that really only leaves "services" that pays very little for many people who used to have better options. The truth is the Middle Class is going to shrink no matter what you do and you are going to basically end up with a very large gap of people making 6 figures (who can afford to hire people to handle things for them) and less skilled people who will be reduced to jobs servicing them that barely pay above minimum wage. People don't like "income redistribution" but that is the only way to actually solve the problem long term. It needs to be done in a way that working is still incentived but where those relatively low paying service jobs + the redistribution leaves people with the housing, food, and health care they need. The reality is, the bottom 50% in most countries need about 20% of the national income to be happy...and in the US they are getting about 12%. The problem is, right now, that is politically impossible outside of a handful of European countries.

by barrkel 10y ago

charlesdm 10y ago

Isn't this just a problem of living in an efficient, globalised society? In an efficient global economy, most of the middle class won't be required, because frankly, most of those jobs are useless and shouldn't even exist in the first place. We'll need the "low level" jobs, e.g. cleaners. Given the cost of automation, it's just not interesting enough to automate this. We'll also need the high level jobs, e.g. anything that requires significant (creative) thinking to some extent. Unique creative thought is probably the only thing that can't be automated at the moment. Most traditional middle class jobs can easily be simplified / removed / etc. For each job that's created in software development, two traditional ones will disappear. We're optimising the world. Tl;dr: Most people, imo, haven't realised the world is changing. The people voting Trump / UKIP / Brexit / Le Pen are (unless someone gives me a good argument) fools for thinking the people they elect can actually change things. I'm not saying they haven't been left behind, or there are no legit concerns, but to think these people can change things.. that's just ridiculous. For example: I dare say Trump doesn't give a flying fuck about what he had to do to get elected. He picked out 5 or 10 focus groups that would give him the necessary votes to win, and focused on those. He won't deliver. He just wanted to be president.

slurry 10y ago
Your comment assumes that Trump/Brexit/Le Pen voters are trying to "do something" with their votes. What if they're just trying to do as much damage as possible, knowing the system has it out for them?
golemotron 10y ago
> For example: I dare say Trump doesn't give a flying fuck about what he had to do to get elected. He picked out 5 or 10 focus groups that would give him the necessary votes to win, and focused on those. He won't deliver. He just wanted to be president. It's weird that we tend to assume people are stupid or disingenuous when we disagree with them. Trump has been on the receiving end of a lot of that and in the case of economics it's easily debunked. He was a supporter of Ross Perot in the 90s, and nearly ran for Perot's Reform party. For those too young to remember, Perot's primary issue was protection for American jobs. The interesting is that, as international businessmen, both Perot and Trump were in more of a position to make money internationally than under the protectionist rules they pushed. When you realize that it looks a little less like self-interest. There are many reasons to dislike Trump but it doesn't do any good to minimize him. In fact, it's counter-productive. You counter your opponent by really knowing him.

DonaldFisk 10y ago

I had originally assumed that the Leave vote in the UK EU referendum was a protest against neoliberalism, but now I'm beginning to wonder. In a few weeks, voters in the UK will have the option of voting for a party (Labour) which now opposes neoliberalism, but it's well-behind in the opinion polls. Even if all the progressive votes (Labour, Lib Dems, SNP/Plaid Cymru, Greens) are aggregated, they're still outnumbered by the combined Tory and UKIP vote. I'm beginning to wonder if support for Brexit was mostly just xenophobia, but not many people like to admit to that.

barrkel 10y ago
The election at this point is about nationalism, and is being compounded by an Us-vs-Them narrative as played out (and played up) with the dinner debacle. People who wouldn't normally vote Tory will vote for May because they want to rally around what they perceive as a strong leader against the Other. Obviously with the dinner debacle the EU side's motive was to inject some realism about the weakness of Britain's hand, but May played it the only way she could have. Britain didn't learn the full lesson from World War II: that nationalism is actually a bad thing. Its approach to Europe has been wrong all throughout as a result, and it's compounded by being joined at the hip to US foreign policy. But everywhere else in the world is growing economically, and the West is shrinking as a slice of the overall pie, and this will naturally add to the continuing decline in the US's ability to project its will. The EU is also about creating a larger centre of gravity able to negotiate as an equal to China and the US. It'll take some time for the UK to realize how lonely it is on the outside, especially as protectionism increases - fewer friendly ports on the open sea, and bigger sharks - it's not the best time to be setting sail alone.
- ygaf 10y ago
  While lazily throwing it out there that nationalism is bad, you do acknowledge the benefit of... continentialism?
  - barrkel 10y ago
    Joining a group means taking some responsibility for its governance and good running. Too many politicians use Brussels as a scapegoat, rather than something they own a piece of. So in so far as continentalism refers to an agglomeration of different peoples trying to speak with one voice, like US, China, Russia, EU - the thing only works if people don't get too cynical about the centre. I don't think there's much alternative to joining a larger political entity if you're geographically near one, given what we know about economic links and distances. A possible advantage of something like the EU is that it doesn't have a cohesive enough identity to think nationalistically and get into trouble that way.

fictioncircle 10y ago

> But we don't have a solution to the problem of global capital chasing efficiency globally, and thereby hollowing out the middle of the income distribution in Western economies. It isn't a solvable problem, honestly, is the big secret no one really wants to admit. Capitalism, by its nature, is going to chase efficiency globally regardless of what you do to prevent it. Technology, over time, is going to make this worse because it is easier to avoid inconvenient regulations by operating out of "friendly" countries as well as enabling automation that really only leaves "services" that pays very little for many people who used to have better options. The truth is the Middle Class is going to shrink no matter what you do and you are going to basically end up with a very large gap of people making 6 figures (who can afford to hire people to handle things for them) and less skilled people who will be reduced to jobs servicing them that barely pay above minimum wage. People don't like "income redistribution" but that is the only way to actually solve the problem long term. It needs to be done in a way that working is still incentived but where those relatively low paying service jobs + the redistribution leaves people with the housing, food, and health care they need. The reality is, the bottom 50% in most countries need about 20% of the national income to be happy...and in the US they are getting about 12%. The problem is, right now, that is politically impossible outside of a handful of European countries.