4 ms·

The reason for this isn't a mystery: the world doesn't work for the plurality of its populace. The current generations were sold a lie of infinite prosperity an

The reason for this isn't a mystery: the world doesn't work for the plurality of its populace. The current generations were sold a lie of infinite prosperity and comforts by their elders and governments, a lie built on the exploitation of former colonies and underdeveloped nations. We see the lie now, and know it cannot be sustained in the face of our current polycrisis (climate, housing, necessities) simply by promoting infinite growth. There's an understanding that we need to curtail consumption and start properly engineering a global economy rather than letting it spawn and mutate naturally, but there's still enough people out there who believe that this demagogue, this partisan, this policy will give them the riches and posh comforts their elders enjoyed, thus returning their country to a golden era that never really existed. It's the desperation of the masses for what they feel is rightfully theirs, because that's what they were told by those who pulled up the ladder behind them. That era is long gone, but nostalgia is a powerful force that's easily propagandized by those who benefit from said desperation.

fiala__ 2y ago
Very well said. I think what you speak of sounds a lot like degrowth and/or idealised socialism. Unfortunately, I don't see either of those ever becoming viable policy in our world. The only times we've managed to even remotely approach such policy is after terrible, long wars. Other than that, the big man promising you shiny stuff has always won.
- mandmandam 2y ago
  > The only times we've managed to even remotely approach such policy is after terrible, long wars Or during/after natural disasters. Any time things get real tough, we tend to default to helping each other out mutual aid style - even in America [0]. Seems worth keeping in mind. 0 - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28048.Hope_in_the_Dark https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28048.Hope_in_the_Dark
- generativenoise 2y ago
  I agree that they are unlikely to become viable policy, but environmentally imposed degrowth will become increasingly real. Natural physical constraints are tightening and are already imposing into manufactured reality. Hitting the physical bounds hard and having to deal with that is looking more likely since human ecological footprint (population x resource intensiveness) is unlikely to drop fast enough to avoid them.
- squigz 2y ago
  The world has changed drastically over the past few decades. Maybe the lessons we've learned historically about socioeconomic systems don't apply so much any more.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
I agree with your core point but: I would believe this affected more of the world if historical turnout for the youth (18-24 or even 18-30) wasn't lower than older populations. That's part of why campaigns focus so little on that age group.
- stego-tech 2y ago
  I can’t fault youth apathy when they’re never offered a realistic future to believe in. It’s far too easy to fall for the narrative that voters are apathetic because it means the outcome is their fault, not the party or candidate whose platform does nothing to address them. Look back at the campaigns from 2012 onward, from both sides. In 2012, both promised more of the same, but the GOP with Romney actually began sliding rightward, articulating the fringes of a potential future for those who preferred oligarchy and authoritarianism, by deliberately mislabeling the Obama administration’s ACA as the very same authoritarianism they sought to enable. In 2016, again, Clinton was more of the same even as the youth vote (what little there was) resonated more with Sanders’ values and vision of the future, while Trump went all out on appealing to the far-right and normalizing their views of a christofascist future (with the help of a media engine that has no interest in facts, only ratings and income). His first tenure was marked with chaos and corruption, but unlike the tiny, incremental steps of the DNC, he went as hard as he could on policy, consequences be damned; that resonated, hard, with an electorate that felt ignored or left behind by the changing positions and attitudes of the broader populace. Then we get to 2020, and this is where alarm bells should’ve gone off. Trump continued his campaign of violent rhetoric and oligarch policies, while Biden’s entire campaign was “I’m not Trump”. He narrowly won the election, and the DNC celebrated it by thinking they now had a mandate for the future, expecting Trump to recede into some other grift. They continued to believe this even after January 6th, relying on “norms” and “decorum” rather than holding him immediately and permanently accountable. He should’ve been barred from running for re-election under the laws of the USA, but the Democrats did nothing to meaningfully punish him. So now we get to 2024, where the electorate yet again has a choice between nothing changing (Harris) and everything changing (Trump). The youth made their concerns clear: a desire for a peaceful world, higher wages, lower costs, and the concept of a future they could work towards. Both ignored most of that, but Trump latched on to that lack of a future vision and pitched his own to his supporters - along with Project 2025, a plan intended to eliminate the chaos of his last term and ensure he met his campaign goals. Put simply, Trump won because the Democrats have failed to present a communicable vision of the future to their electorate. Yes, his vision is evil, but in a world where any vision is better than none at all, it’s little wonder he has won on that platform twice. I’d strongly encourage other political parties to wake up and smell the reality, before it’s too late.
RangerScience 2y ago
AFAICT, three of the prior four elections also went to “change” (Obama, Obama, trump). While it would not be conductive to the discussion for me express my judgment of some of that change; it does feel like the most active and vocal people (who in turn gain followers) are the ones talking about not maintaining the status quo.
- squigz 2y ago
  That 'change' is I think exactly what GP is referring to here: > people out there who believe that this demagogue, this partisan, this policy will give them the riches and posh comforts their elders enjoyed None of the promised or delivered change really upset the status quo.
  - stego-tech 2y ago
    Got it in one. The only “changes” thus far have been slight alterations to the status quo to preserve it just a bit longer, to tamp down discontent ever so slightly so the boat doesn’t capsize. The Affordable Care Act was meant to appease the masses after bailing out the financial sector’s gambling problem, while unchecked stimulus payments were intended to appease the masses during COVID, knowing full well it would drive inflation as it was siphoned from the masses into the pockets of the wealthy. Here, too, the masses will be given a bone of sorts to appease them when their civil liberties are run roughshod or eliminated altogether, likely in the form of some financial stimulus for housing that just ends up in the hands of the wealthy again anyway. The real underlying problem the United States faces is the reckoning of the American Dream against reality. It’s not possible for everyone to be a billionaire, to have a huge home on a large plot of land, to drive luxury SUVs and rent out a second home for passive income. Yet as long as Americans (and people in general) still believe that dream really is attainable, if they just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and work longer hours and take more risks, then the status quo will merely continue to crumble at its foundation until a sudden and violent collapse of the structure occurs.
0dayz 2y ago
That's nice and all how exactly are we going to do this adversaries like China or Russia?
yung_steezy 2y ago
Growth can be achieved with productivity gains where you produce the same amount with fewer resources.
deanCommie 2y ago
You are BANG on but the solution to this problem needs to be extremely carefully considered. For one, keeping the economy going and growing is actually our only chance to tackle climate change and fossil fuel egress. The reason the western nations have been able to reduce their per-capita consumption is because of accumulated wealth during their booms (and colonialism) that they were then able to spend on efficient infrastructure, whether nuclear, solar or wind. China is smart and collectivist enough to achieve the same, but the rest of the world isn't yet. There have been incredible advancements in efficiencies and costs of things like solar, making it cheaper, but to truly migrate the world still requires massive expenditures and investments into energy grid upgrades, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, etc. All of this requires wealth, which requires a growing economy, which requires optimism. Because the economy is only as positive as the optimism of the populace. Optimism isn't rational. There has never been a time in Human history (maybe for less than a decade in the 90s between the fall of the cold war and 9/11, as long as you weren't in the balkans) when the logical decision would've been to be optimistic about the future. Yet people did anyway out of necessity/obligation to their children, out of religion, out of greed, out of empathy. Whatever is the reason it is required. And this is what I see lacking today - especially with Gen Z, who's education we (well - their Gen X parents, but in the society) fucked up by telling them the truth. We told them the world is going to hell, that anything good they had is based on generations of blood and exploitation, the world is unfair and is full of rich people getting richer, and nepotism. And, I actually believe everything in that sentence is true! But it's irrelevant. Because it's no foundation for actually DOING something about the problem. Instead it's an exercise to disengage, to decide not to participate in society, to sink deeper into online social spaces that this generation was raised on by being exposed to screens & social media too early. So what do they get attracted to instead? Red pill, manosphere, 4chan, and eventually Trump. Because here come people with solutions - there IS a problem, but it's not your fault - it's THEIR fault (women, immigrants, foreigners). How can you not be attracted to it? The left has no alternative answer for this. They/we/me want a better world, but we focus on equalization of justice - to bring up the disadvantaged to the level of the dominant class - but no plan for what to do next. If western prosperity was borne out of exploitation, you can't simply raise the formerly-exploited to the high water mark, and expect to be able to continue growing it at the same pace. (That's before even getting into ongoing exploitation that funds the entire western world by taking advantage of the 3rd world) And yet, you also can't sink into apathy. You need awareness of the realities of the situation, but you need to empower people that they can make a change...that they can participate. And that they can overcome. Some of this requires self-delusion, but ultimately it needs inspiration. Of which the left is extraordinarily low on right now.
roncesvalles 2y ago
>a lie built on the exploitation of former colonies and underdeveloped nations This is the key. The West is no longer as relatively rich as it used to be. Large swaths of the human populace have moved out of poverty just since 1990, causing a sort of "prosperity inflation" where the old prosperous Western nations are no longer as far ahead anymore. Just the top 10% of India, China, and miracle-on-the-river Asian countries is more than the population of the US, definitely better educated, lives in better conditions than Americans, and competes for the same resources including American jobs. An invisible America-sized country has emerged from thin air in the last 3 decades, and it's better than America. I think this has already had a deep impact on the psyche of the West. E.g. the phrase "filthy rich" now conjures up images of an Asian international student with bottomless family money from mysterious sources, not an old white family living in Connecticut. The richest man in the world has a foreign accent. The valedictorian is never an unhyphenated American kid. The past appears better than the present for America because, taking into account this "prosperity inflation", it really was.

fiala__ 2y ago

Very well said. I think what you speak of sounds a lot like degrowth and/or idealised socialism. Unfortunately, I don't see either of those ever becoming viable policy in our world. The only times we've managed to even remotely approach such policy is after terrible, long wars. Other than that, the big man promising you shiny stuff has always won.

mandmandam 2y ago
> The only times we've managed to even remotely approach such policy is after terrible, long wars Or during/after natural disasters. Any time things get real tough, we tend to default to helping each other out mutual aid style - even in America [0]. Seems worth keeping in mind. 0 - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28048.Hope_in_the_Dark https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28048.Hope_in_the_Dark
generativenoise 2y ago
I agree that they are unlikely to become viable policy, but environmentally imposed degrowth will become increasingly real. Natural physical constraints are tightening and are already imposing into manufactured reality. Hitting the physical bounds hard and having to deal with that is looking more likely since human ecological footprint (population x resource intensiveness) is unlikely to drop fast enough to avoid them.
squigz 2y ago
The world has changed drastically over the past few decades. Maybe the lessons we've learned historically about socioeconomic systems don't apply so much any more.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

I agree with your core point but: I would believe this affected more of the world if historical turnout for the youth (18-24 or even 18-30) wasn't lower than older populations. That's part of why campaigns focus so little on that age group.

stego-tech 2y ago
I can’t fault youth apathy when they’re never offered a realistic future to believe in. It’s far too easy to fall for the narrative that voters are apathetic because it means the outcome is their fault, not the party or candidate whose platform does nothing to address them. Look back at the campaigns from 2012 onward, from both sides. In 2012, both promised more of the same, but the GOP with Romney actually began sliding rightward, articulating the fringes of a potential future for those who preferred oligarchy and authoritarianism, by deliberately mislabeling the Obama administration’s ACA as the very same authoritarianism they sought to enable. In 2016, again, Clinton was more of the same even as the youth vote (what little there was) resonated more with Sanders’ values and vision of the future, while Trump went all out on appealing to the far-right and normalizing their views of a christofascist future (with the help of a media engine that has no interest in facts, only ratings and income). His first tenure was marked with chaos and corruption, but unlike the tiny, incremental steps of the DNC, he went as hard as he could on policy, consequences be damned; that resonated, hard, with an electorate that felt ignored or left behind by the changing positions and attitudes of the broader populace. Then we get to 2020, and this is where alarm bells should’ve gone off. Trump continued his campaign of violent rhetoric and oligarch policies, while Biden’s entire campaign was “I’m not Trump”. He narrowly won the election, and the DNC celebrated it by thinking they now had a mandate for the future, expecting Trump to recede into some other grift. They continued to believe this even after January 6th, relying on “norms” and “decorum” rather than holding him immediately and permanently accountable. He should’ve been barred from running for re-election under the laws of the USA, but the Democrats did nothing to meaningfully punish him. So now we get to 2024, where the electorate yet again has a choice between nothing changing (Harris) and everything changing (Trump). The youth made their concerns clear: a desire for a peaceful world, higher wages, lower costs, and the concept of a future they could work towards. Both ignored most of that, but Trump latched on to that lack of a future vision and pitched his own to his supporters - along with Project 2025, a plan intended to eliminate the chaos of his last term and ensure he met his campaign goals. Put simply, Trump won because the Democrats have failed to present a communicable vision of the future to their electorate. Yes, his vision is evil, but in a world where any vision is better than none at all, it’s little wonder he has won on that platform twice. I’d strongly encourage other political parties to wake up and smell the reality, before it’s too late.

RangerScience 2y ago

AFAICT, three of the prior four elections also went to “change” (Obama, Obama, trump). While it would not be conductive to the discussion for me express my judgment of some of that change; it does feel like the most active and vocal people (who in turn gain followers) are the ones talking about not maintaining the status quo.

squigz 2y ago
That 'change' is I think exactly what GP is referring to here: > people out there who believe that this demagogue, this partisan, this policy will give them the riches and posh comforts their elders enjoyed None of the promised or delivered change really upset the status quo.
- stego-tech 2y ago
  Got it in one. The only “changes” thus far have been slight alterations to the status quo to preserve it just a bit longer, to tamp down discontent ever so slightly so the boat doesn’t capsize. The Affordable Care Act was meant to appease the masses after bailing out the financial sector’s gambling problem, while unchecked stimulus payments were intended to appease the masses during COVID, knowing full well it would drive inflation as it was siphoned from the masses into the pockets of the wealthy. Here, too, the masses will be given a bone of sorts to appease them when their civil liberties are run roughshod or eliminated altogether, likely in the form of some financial stimulus for housing that just ends up in the hands of the wealthy again anyway. The real underlying problem the United States faces is the reckoning of the American Dream against reality. It’s not possible for everyone to be a billionaire, to have a huge home on a large plot of land, to drive luxury SUVs and rent out a second home for passive income. Yet as long as Americans (and people in general) still believe that dream really is attainable, if they just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and work longer hours and take more risks, then the status quo will merely continue to crumble at its foundation until a sudden and violent collapse of the structure occurs.

0dayz 2y ago

That's nice and all how exactly are we going to do this adversaries like China or Russia?

yung_steezy 2y ago

Growth can be achieved with productivity gains where you produce the same amount with fewer resources.

deanCommie 2y ago

You are BANG on but the solution to this problem needs to be extremely carefully considered. For one, keeping the economy going and growing is actually our only chance to tackle climate change and fossil fuel egress. The reason the western nations have been able to reduce their per-capita consumption is because of accumulated wealth during their booms (and colonialism) that they were then able to spend on efficient infrastructure, whether nuclear, solar or wind. China is smart and collectivist enough to achieve the same, but the rest of the world isn't yet. There have been incredible advancements in efficiencies and costs of things like solar, making it cheaper, but to truly migrate the world still requires massive expenditures and investments into energy grid upgrades, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, etc. All of this requires wealth, which requires a growing economy, which requires optimism. Because the economy is only as positive as the optimism of the populace. Optimism isn't rational. There has never been a time in Human history (maybe for less than a decade in the 90s between the fall of the cold war and 9/11, as long as you weren't in the balkans) when the logical decision would've been to be optimistic about the future. Yet people did anyway out of necessity/obligation to their children, out of religion, out of greed, out of empathy. Whatever is the reason it is required. And this is what I see lacking today - especially with Gen Z, who's education we (well - their Gen X parents, but in the society) fucked up by telling them the truth. We told them the world is going to hell, that anything good they had is based on generations of blood and exploitation, the world is unfair and is full of rich people getting richer, and nepotism. And, I actually believe everything in that sentence is true! But it's irrelevant. Because it's no foundation for actually DOING something about the problem. Instead it's an exercise to disengage, to decide not to participate in society, to sink deeper into online social spaces that this generation was raised on by being exposed to screens & social media too early. So what do they get attracted to instead? Red pill, manosphere, 4chan, and eventually Trump. Because here come people with solutions - there IS a problem, but it's not your fault - it's THEIR fault (women, immigrants, foreigners). How can you not be attracted to it? The left has no alternative answer for this. They/we/me want a better world, but we focus on equalization of justice - to bring up the disadvantaged to the level of the dominant class - but no plan for what to do next. If western prosperity was borne out of exploitation, you can't simply raise the formerly-exploited to the high water mark, and expect to be able to continue growing it at the same pace. (That's before even getting into ongoing exploitation that funds the entire western world by taking advantage of the 3rd world) And yet, you also can't sink into apathy. You need awareness of the realities of the situation, but you need to empower people that they can make a change...that they can participate. And that they can overcome. Some of this requires self-delusion, but ultimately it needs inspiration. Of which the left is extraordinarily low on right now.

roncesvalles 2y ago

>a lie built on the exploitation of former colonies and underdeveloped nations This is the key. The West is no longer as relatively rich as it used to be. Large swaths of the human populace have moved out of poverty just since 1990, causing a sort of "prosperity inflation" where the old prosperous Western nations are no longer as far ahead anymore. Just the top 10% of India, China, and miracle-on-the-river Asian countries is more than the population of the US, definitely better educated, lives in better conditions than Americans, and competes for the same resources including American jobs. An invisible America-sized country has emerged from thin air in the last 3 decades, and it's better than America. I think this has already had a deep impact on the psyche of the West. E.g. the phrase "filthy rich" now conjures up images of an Asian international student with bottomless family money from mysterious sources, not an old white family living in Connecticut. The richest man in the world has a foreign accent. The valedictorian is never an unhyphenated American kid. The past appears better than the present for America because, taking into account this "prosperity inflation", it really was.