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To me, "WTF happened in 1971" has always been transparently obvious -- we moved off the gold standard. I'm not a goldbug, I don't think we can put that genie b
by uoaei 3y ago
To me, "WTF happened in 1971" has always been transparently obvious -- we moved off the gold standard.
I'm not a goldbug, I don't think we can put that genie back in the bottle. But with the ability to just create money out of nothing for free, without having to answer to some notion of conservation-of-whatever, is what re-appropriated a lot of human effort toward non-productive ends. That plus the rise of a debt-based society (driven by the banks' addiction to creating money, I mean, issuing loans) prepared the cultural and economic powerhouse that was the US and its effective vassal states in the West to move from primarily production to primarily consumption. In truth, the cultural shift began in the postwar boom and the advertisement and uptake of the proverbial "white-picket fence" lifestyle but was fully unleashed in the 70s.
- midasuni 3y agoThe whole point of that site is to sell that narrative
- sambazi 3y agook, then let's have an alternate pov
- uoaei 3y agoYou're right of course, but it does so quite indirectly, frequently leaning on 2nd- and beyond order effects like incarceration rates, physics degrees, etc. It is not straightforward to connect them if you've always been steeped in the narrative America tells about itself.
- ozim 3y agoWhat are “non productive ends”? Why would we have to work only on “productive” ones. Maybe non productive ones in your sense still have positive benefits that help us achieve productive ones better?
- uoaei 3y agoIf that were true our productivity would have increased...
- ozim 3y agoYou know that article took: *We have this unprecedented 50x rise in manual work productivity between 1870 and 1970. Then, at the exact time you’d expect things to have another 50x boost because of the computer revolution, things start slowing down.* Then run away with it "manual work productivity" - my question was also "what are productive ends" which was not addressed. I call total BS on article and "productivity", because big scale construction might take more time and have higher cost but are we comparing the same things. Like bridges built 50 years ago are not the same built nowadays, processes are more complicated but we get better buildings with new materials and new ways of building.
- friend_and_foe 3y agoI think it's probably one of the core causes, but trying to piece together how a barely noticed yet fundamental change in the technology that is money can cause all of these effects requires understanding money to an almost unreal level of depth. I'm still trying to figure out and wrap my head around it, but I think what they did had way more consequences than the architects of that decision realized, even deep cultural impacts, that, like many historical events, will only really be clearly understood in hindsight well into the future.
- uoaei 3y agoMMT perspectives, considered undogmatically, help a lot in this regard, as does the colloquialism that "money only has value because people believe it does". More or less everything follows from there.