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This is clearly measured by the share of wealth that is generated and returned to workers vs. Capital owners. There’s no need to get philosophical about it as t
by bugglebeetle 3y ago
This is clearly measured by the share of wealth that is generated and returned to workers vs. Capital owners. There’s no need to get philosophical about it as this is all been pretty well documented. Things have become more unequal, as I described.
> If you accept that all nations are constantly under pressure from external threats, the fact that the USSR was too is not an explanation for the authoritarianism that arose there.
I do accept this and note that it is a common pattern across countries, relative to their development. The US became much more authoritarian post 9/11, suspended many forms of rights and freedoms, disregarded its own and international laws. But because it was a more stable political formation, did not devolve into full authoritarianism. Still, within 19 years, it faced an insurrection attempt by an authoritarian leader. The USSR was, by contrast, about a decade old, newly emerged from a civil war, and had very little in the way of solid state infrastructure. It’s thus unsurprising that they devolved into authoritarianism.
- akoboldfrying 3y ago>This is clearly measured by the share of wealth that is generated and returned to workers vs. Capital owners. I'm not sure what you mean by "this". (I don't think you meant absolute progress, since that is not measured this way.)
- bugglebeetle 3y agoSocietal progress (vs. technological progress) is clearly tied to wealth inequality, as is evident by the US having high wealth inequality and underperforming other developed countries on various other measures of health and well-being (e.g. infant and maternal mortality, educational performance, lifespan, rates of interpersonal violence etc). It’s a crude yardstick, but wealth inequality is negatively correlated with any common-sense understanding of societal progress (“societal” being inherently collective, after all).
- akoboldfrying 3y agoThanks for clarifying, but I see no correlation. If we doubled the wealth of the richest 1% but held the poorest 1%'s wealth constant, do you think infant mortality, educational performance, etc., would worsen for anyone in society? I surely don't.
- defrost 3y agoYou might look to the wealth distribution in (say) Australia and the US and life expectancy and Quality of life metric. The wealthy in US are much wealthier than the remaining population in the US (greater inequality than Australia), the US as a country has lower life expectancy and qality of life reported overall. Your "thought experiment" isn't particularly realistic, "double the wealth" for the wealthy isn't something that magically happens in isolation.
- bugglebeetle 3y agoIndeed, it comes at the expense of everyone else, which is again evident in all these quality of life measures.