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Hype is the product, and what it's the product of is a wealth imbalance that forces capital into (and I apologize in advance for the ire this characterization i

Hype is the product, and what it's the product of is a wealth imbalance that forces capital into (and I apologize in advance for the ire this characterization is likely to cause) Stupid Boomer Things. That is, the way the oldest and wealthiest Americans want to live and/or what they think will make them the most money. Poor old people don't like this kind of change because it has historically come at their expense. Young people don't like this new tech because they recognize it (to varying degrees of correctness) as pulling up the ladder on entry-level positions, decimating the social and knowledge landscape (particularly the treacherous, abyssal seas that used to be the World Wide Web), amd drawing capital away from green tech and social investment and into climate change-exacerbating energy usage and construction. But they don't have the capital to dictate investment decisions, so no one cares. I don't think this changes without some sort of economic "catastrophe" that redistributes wealth fast enough that the current arbiters can't get their legs back under themselves in time to prevent it. That's why you keep seeing all of these weird and novel tactics to forestall even the hint of a recession, and why so many young people are practically begging for, say, a repeat of 2008. Edit: Also, I really like this site's layout on my phone. It feels fresh and performant.

leptons 1y ago
>Stupid Boomer Things Ageism is never a good look. There are smart and stupid people in every age group.
- h2zizzle 1y ago
  Doesn't matter. If a system's purpose is what it does, a people's priorities are what they invest in, in aggregate. Boomers hold outsize wealth and have steered America's economic and political ship for most of the lives of the younger generations. So the current crop of Stupid Things are mostly Stupid Boomer Things (or else they wouldn't exist, as there would be no money or political will to sustain them). Refusing to take responsibility isn't a good look, either. So is derailing with respectability gripes. Let's solve the problem at hand.
  - leptons 1y ago
    >Refusing to take responsibility isn't a good look, either You want me to take responsibility for how other people in my age group vote (not that I am a boomer, I'm not)? That's your argument? Thanks but no thanks for this ridiculous comment thread.
    - h2zizzle 1y ago
      >You want me to take responsibility for how other people in my age group vote. Yes. Or, rather, you already are responsible, commensurate with your level of wealth/social influence.
      - leptons 1y ago
        That's nonsense. What age group are you in? Young people voted in record numbers for fascists last time around in the US. If you're young, are you going to take responsibility for them voting for fascists? What about people in the same age group in other countries? Do you take responsibility for how they vote too since they are in the same age range? Your ageism argument is ridiculous.
        h2zizzle 1y ago
        >If you're young, are you going to take responsibility for them voting for fascists? Yes, I'm pretty regularly debating my conservative peers and trying to think of ways to convince them that they f*cked up and need to vote better. >What about people in the same age group in other countries? Yes, I accept that much of where my international peers find themselves and the nature of the choices they have to make were defined by US policy, including during the period that I've been able to vote. It's not our fault that Boomers were selfish and Gen-X were pathologically apathetic. Unfortunately, we have to take responsibility there, too, partly by reminding you of how much you screwed up, until you resolve to do better with the time you have left (or to at least get out of the way).
lo_zamoyski 1y ago
Your political and moral imagination in hampered by the uber-adversarial and totally transactional understanding of human nature that the liberal worldview presupposes (by "liberal", I mean the hyperindividualistic ethos in the tradition of Hobbes, Locke, and Mill). That's why you flirt with what sounds like socialist-style redistribution as the only option and view capital as an enemy of labor. In the liberal worldview, private property has prior existence. The common good is understood as a concession, a derivative good composed of that which is ceded from private property. Human beings are viewed as atomized units, and society is consequently viewed as a fluctuating miasma of transactional relationships. In the classical view, the common good has prior existence, and private property exists for the sake of the common good (we avoid a whole lot of grief and social strife by having private property; properly disposed, it is a successful means of distribution). Capital and labor are not construed as necessarily opposed. Rather, in a society in which cooperative relationships for mutual benefit are the rule (in place of a market driven by exploitation), capital and labor are friends. Both have skin in the game by assuming risk. In the classical view, workers are owed at least a family wage as a matter of justice. If we have a billionaire who fails to pay his employees adequately, then we have someone who quite literally has robbed his employees. Human relationships are not confined to merely the transactional, and we have duties toward society that precede our consent. According to a liberal view, if a famine strikes ą region and some guy has a warehouse full of food, it would be theft for to take the food in that warehouse to survive, and theft, of course, is not morally permissible (it is absurd to claim otherwise; it's theft!). Meanwhile, according to a classical view, private property is not fixed absolutely. As you recall, it exists for the sake of the common good. So, in such a case, the food in that warehouse is not absolutely determined as private property. Private property is derived and ordered toward the common good. It would not be theft for the starving to take food from that warehouse, as the food quite literally belongs to them! (This is an extreme example, but I include it to demonstrate how the consequences of each stance play out.)
- zahlman 1y ago
  It took me hardly any effort to find an essay that appears to be arguing that Hobbes' thought is in many ways compatible with that sort of redistribution: https://brill.com/view/journals/hobs/34/1/article-p9_9.xml https://brill.com/view/journals/hobs/34/1/article-p9_9.xml Some quotes: > Also notable is Gregory Kavka, who argues, “Though it is rarely noticed, Hobbes is a bit of an economic liberal, that is, he believes in some form of the welfare state and in the redistributive taxation needed to support it.”7 .... But Kavka’s analysis has two significant flaws. First, ... Hobbes dedicates arguably greater attention to the problems associated with excessive wealth. ... The second problem with Kavka’s analysis is that it ignores Hobbes’s rich moral psychology that is integral to Hobbes’s understanding of the problems associated with wealth, poverty, and inequality. > Hobbes’s political program prioritizes peace above all. Along these lines, it is essential when considering Hobbes on economics that one understands how poverty, concentrated wealth, and inequality can obstruct peace. This is one of the fundamental lessons Hobbes likely learned in the decades leading up to the English Civil War – a war at least partly facilitated by the economic upheaval, the impoverishment of many along with the enriching of others, the concentration of wealth, and the systemic inequality. Hobbes acknowledges some of this in his own history of the Civil War, Behemoth. > While Hobbes is surely concerned about the problems poverty pose for his commonwealth, he expresses even greater concern about concentrated wealth. His earliest discussion of wealth can be found in his Briefe of the Art of Rhetoric, written in 1637, his summary of Aristotle’s Rhetoric.84 Classical liberals are not the same people as modern libertarians or minarchists.
bagacrap 1y ago
Just build nuclear.

leptons 1y ago

>Stupid Boomer Things Ageism is never a good look. There are smart and stupid people in every age group.

h2zizzle 1y ago
Doesn't matter. If a system's purpose is what it does, a people's priorities are what they invest in, in aggregate. Boomers hold outsize wealth and have steered America's economic and political ship for most of the lives of the younger generations. So the current crop of Stupid Things are mostly Stupid Boomer Things (or else they wouldn't exist, as there would be no money or political will to sustain them). Refusing to take responsibility isn't a good look, either. So is derailing with respectability gripes. Let's solve the problem at hand.
- leptons 1y ago
  >Refusing to take responsibility isn't a good look, either You want me to take responsibility for how other people in my age group vote (not that I am a boomer, I'm not)? That's your argument? Thanks but no thanks for this ridiculous comment thread.
  - h2zizzle 1y ago
    >You want me to take responsibility for how other people in my age group vote. Yes. Or, rather, you already are responsible, commensurate with your level of wealth/social influence.
    - leptons 1y ago
      That's nonsense. What age group are you in? Young people voted in record numbers for fascists last time around in the US. If you're young, are you going to take responsibility for them voting for fascists? What about people in the same age group in other countries? Do you take responsibility for how they vote too since they are in the same age range? Your ageism argument is ridiculous.
      - h2zizzle 1y ago
        >If you're young, are you going to take responsibility for them voting for fascists? Yes, I'm pretty regularly debating my conservative peers and trying to think of ways to convince them that they f*cked up and need to vote better. >What about people in the same age group in other countries? Yes, I accept that much of where my international peers find themselves and the nature of the choices they have to make were defined by US policy, including during the period that I've been able to vote. It's not our fault that Boomers were selfish and Gen-X were pathologically apathetic. Unfortunately, we have to take responsibility there, too, partly by reminding you of how much you screwed up, until you resolve to do better with the time you have left (or to at least get out of the way).

lo_zamoyski 1y ago

Your political and moral imagination in hampered by the uber-adversarial and totally transactional understanding of human nature that the liberal worldview presupposes (by "liberal", I mean the hyperindividualistic ethos in the tradition of Hobbes, Locke, and Mill). That's why you flirt with what sounds like socialist-style redistribution as the only option and view capital as an enemy of labor. In the liberal worldview, private property has prior existence. The common good is understood as a concession, a derivative good composed of that which is ceded from private property. Human beings are viewed as atomized units, and society is consequently viewed as a fluctuating miasma of transactional relationships. In the classical view, the common good has prior existence, and private property exists for the sake of the common good (we avoid a whole lot of grief and social strife by having private property; properly disposed, it is a successful means of distribution). Capital and labor are not construed as necessarily opposed. Rather, in a society in which cooperative relationships for mutual benefit are the rule (in place of a market driven by exploitation), capital and labor are friends. Both have skin in the game by assuming risk. In the classical view, workers are owed at least a family wage as a matter of justice. If we have a billionaire who fails to pay his employees adequately, then we have someone who quite literally has robbed his employees. Human relationships are not confined to merely the transactional, and we have duties toward society that precede our consent. According to a liberal view, if a famine strikes ą region and some guy has a warehouse full of food, it would be theft for to take the food in that warehouse to survive, and theft, of course, is not morally permissible (it is absurd to claim otherwise; it's theft!). Meanwhile, according to a classical view, private property is not fixed absolutely. As you recall, it exists for the sake of the common good. So, in such a case, the food in that warehouse is not absolutely determined as private property. Private property is derived and ordered toward the common good. It would not be theft for the starving to take food from that warehouse, as the food quite literally belongs to them! (This is an extreme example, but I include it to demonstrate how the consequences of each stance play out.)

zahlman 1y ago
It took me hardly any effort to find an essay that appears to be arguing that Hobbes' thought is in many ways compatible with that sort of redistribution: https://brill.com/view/journals/hobs/34/1/article-p9_9.xml https://brill.com/view/journals/hobs/34/1/article-p9_9.xml Some quotes: > Also notable is Gregory Kavka, who argues, “Though it is rarely noticed, Hobbes is a bit of an economic liberal, that is, he believes in some form of the welfare state and in the redistributive taxation needed to support it.”7 .... But Kavka’s analysis has two significant flaws. First, ... Hobbes dedicates arguably greater attention to the problems associated with excessive wealth. ... The second problem with Kavka’s analysis is that it ignores Hobbes’s rich moral psychology that is integral to Hobbes’s understanding of the problems associated with wealth, poverty, and inequality. > Hobbes’s political program prioritizes peace above all. Along these lines, it is essential when considering Hobbes on economics that one understands how poverty, concentrated wealth, and inequality can obstruct peace. This is one of the fundamental lessons Hobbes likely learned in the decades leading up to the English Civil War – a war at least partly facilitated by the economic upheaval, the impoverishment of many along with the enriching of others, the concentration of wealth, and the systemic inequality. Hobbes acknowledges some of this in his own history of the Civil War, Behemoth. > While Hobbes is surely concerned about the problems poverty pose for his commonwealth, he expresses even greater concern about concentrated wealth. His earliest discussion of wealth can be found in his Briefe of the Art of Rhetoric, written in 1637, his summary of Aristotle’s Rhetoric.84 Classical liberals are not the same people as modern libertarians or minarchists.

bagacrap 1y ago

Just build nuclear.