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1776 to 1847: Citizen America. 1848 to 1932: Producer America. 1933 to 2007: Consumer America. 2008 to ???: Cosmopolitan America. Citizen America was an experi

1776 to 1847: Citizen America. 1848 to 1932: Producer America. 1933 to 2007: Consumer America. 2008 to ???: Cosmopolitan America. Citizen America was an experiment in rational government that succeeded with flying colors in some ways (secularism, increasing confidence in popular government) but struggled immensely with the division-of-labor question, ultimately falling into bitter conflict (then war) over slavery. Producer America started with the Industrial Revolution (which solved division-of-labor issues) and ran through the Gilded Age, and ultimately fell apart with the Great Depression, which taught us how bad things get for everyone if people can't buy the things being produced by industry. Consumer America started with the New Deal and Keynesian economics, reached its cultural height in the 1950s-60s, and is now unraveling because it's unsatisfying and culturally empty. Also, the foreign policy (need to justify this hyperconsumptive lifestyle in which people eat 3x as much meat and do 2x as much driving as makes sense) has been horrid, to the point that even most Americans don't support it. Cosmopolitan America is driven by a generation of people who see themselves as global citizens and want to improve the rest of the world through organic, democratic, and compassionate means (no more "bomb 'em till they love us"). Also, it seeks to allow more people to have involvement in production. It turns out to be a very unrewarding existence to be a corporate drone whose only real contribution to life is to consume (especially as those pointless, menial jobs get cut, thanks to technology). What we're seeing now is the conflict between Consumer vs. Cosmopolitan America.

rquantz 14y ago
What we're seeing now is the conflict between Consumer vs. Cosmopolitan America Cosmopolitan America, if it exists as a mass paradigm, is at this point mostly aspirational. Our entire culture and economy revolve around consumption. Most jobs are in service, not production. It is difficult to be a citizen of the world when the world is so disunified -- see attempts to do anything of use to combat global warming. Meanwhile, capital is doing its very best to coopt any nascent consciousness of Americans as producers rather than consumers. You can see how quickly, for instance, hipster culture, which started out as anti-consumer (thrift stores, reclaimed industrial spaces, living in the cracks of society producing art instead of having normal jobs) was commodified and turned into fashion, and people who were drawn to hipsterdom were channeled into more appropriate avenues for buying.
ArkyBeagle 14y ago
Each of these depends on the predecessor, so these seem to be layers. Production went way up during Consumer America. And it is not clear that Cosmopolitan America is any America ( as a distinct idea ) at all. Since it's transnational, it lacks the sort of identity that a nation-state needs. If Cosmopolitan America also means drones... Keynes/Galbraith didn't fail so much as it was abandoned. The thing that peaked in the '50s/'60s was the large monolithic corporation ( as more in Galbraith than Keynes but still ...). People drive too much to change land use. It's about the cost of a square foot of housing as a function of distance to where one works. Cosmopolitan vs. Consumer sounds an awful lot like GenX/Millenial vs. Baby Boomer. It's still consumerism, it's just iPhone consumerism. I rather like Robin Hanson's "farmer/forager" model better.

rquantz 14y ago

What we're seeing now is the conflict between Consumer vs. Cosmopolitan America Cosmopolitan America, if it exists as a mass paradigm, is at this point mostly aspirational. Our entire culture and economy revolve around consumption. Most jobs are in service, not production. It is difficult to be a citizen of the world when the world is so disunified -- see attempts to do anything of use to combat global warming. Meanwhile, capital is doing its very best to coopt any nascent consciousness of Americans as producers rather than consumers. You can see how quickly, for instance, hipster culture, which started out as anti-consumer (thrift stores, reclaimed industrial spaces, living in the cracks of society producing art instead of having normal jobs) was commodified and turned into fashion, and people who were drawn to hipsterdom were channeled into more appropriate avenues for buying.

ArkyBeagle 14y ago

Each of these depends on the predecessor, so these seem to be layers. Production went way up during Consumer America. And it is not clear that Cosmopolitan America is any America ( as a distinct idea ) at all. Since it's transnational, it lacks the sort of identity that a nation-state needs. If Cosmopolitan America also means drones... Keynes/Galbraith didn't fail so much as it was abandoned. The thing that peaked in the '50s/'60s was the large monolithic corporation ( as more in Galbraith than Keynes but still ...). People drive too much to change land use. It's about the cost of a square foot of housing as a function of distance to where one works. Cosmopolitan vs. Consumer sounds an awful lot like GenX/Millenial vs. Baby Boomer. It's still consumerism, it's just iPhone consumerism. I rather like Robin Hanson's "farmer/forager" model better.