8 ms·

The move towards profit at all costs to the general public is seemingly global at this point. There's not much escaping it. We all know the trouble with the U.S

The move towards profit at all costs to the general public is seemingly global at this point. There's not much escaping it. We all know the trouble with the U.S. Harper's government in Canada has silenced scientists who would speak out about the negative impacts of government policies, the UK is seeing university tuitions triple and then some, with student loans becoming more and more normal, despite the huge flashing warning sign the U.S. is about student debt... All over - stories about propping up the rich on the backs of anyone not rich. The thing is, the middle and lower classes are complicit in their own demise, voting in conservative governments or lackey liberals who don't even make attempts to keep their corporate connections secret anymore - let alone their desires to make life easier on those that already have it the easiest. Just toss a few "abortion" quotes around and the public will distract themselves with infighting while their standards of living are being destroyed, and for the first time in modern history, your kids won't be better off or live longer than you. Used to be we could say that at least there were scientists and other altruistic professions out there fighting the good fight. But even they are being actively stifled in order to boost corporate profits (US, Canada, others.) I don't even know. I hate being pessimistic. Apologies. End rant.

derptacos 11y ago
Seems very dystopian, but truth in it. Is a revolution really the only answer?
- jjoonathan 11y ago
  God I hope not. Revolution has always been a shitshow and I don't even want to think how it would look given technological advancement since the last time around. There's reason to hope. As a nation we have faced bigger issues than this and come out on top. Besides, there are still a handful of decent ways out. Social policy like reducing the workweek to restore supply/demand balance in the labor market could work. So could basic/minimum income, although I suspect that it's politically untenable even though it would be cheaper in the big picture. The least efficient but most probable (IMO) approach would be to grow the size of our creaking, bloated menagerie of inefficient social programs. So far, capitalist societies have generally been far better than Marx assumed at figuring out how to implement the minimum possible social policy to stave off rebellion. I don't know whether to call it optimistic or pessimistic, but I suspect the trend will continue. Hopefully we won't go full Orwell in the process, but I wouldn't put money on it. We're already turnkey-Orwell and I think most of us can tell which way the wind is blowing. More optimistically, I think there's also a chance that market dynamics will shift for the better due to technological change. Sure, 3D printing has been overhyped to the moon and back, but if rents are increasing while the inefficiency of distributed production is decreasing, then eventually there's going to be a crossing point. Once everyone has self-replicating farms, power shifts back to the people and free market dynamics start working for the masses instead of against them. It'll require a ton of effort and investment to make it happen, but that makes it just the sort of thing to provide opportunity to the HN crowd :) /crazy speculation
  - kenrikm 11y ago
    I can't think of a single revolution that ended with a better government replacing the existing one except for the American one. Russia, Cuba, Iran, etc.. don't make the odds seem likely.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - RodericDay 11y ago
      Sounds like the American educational system at work
    - yeureka 11y ago
      I can, specially in Europe. One good example might be the Portuguese Carnation Revolution that took place in 1974. It overthrew a corporatist dictatorship where private enterprise created a feudal system based on state sponsored monopolies handed out to a few families. The dictator himself was apparently modest in his life style, but his friends running the monopolies were very wealthy. Life for the common person improved significantly after the revolution with access to free health-care, more education and better worker rights.
      - killerpopiller 11y ago
        1989 eastern germany - we call it revolution
        akavel 11y ago
        please note, that 1989 in eastern Europe was specifically towards democracy and capitalism, against communism and revolutionary state socialism!
    - joeyspn 11y ago
      Ever heard about the French Revolution?
- junto 11y ago
  I have an alternative, but I'm not sure how you implement it. The crux if the problem is the greed for profit. As consumers we act as individuals and the corporations like it that way. The key to controlling corporations is hitting them where it hurts, I.e. their wallets. If we could unite as consumers we would have the power to crush corporations who do not play fair. If we could find a way to unite consumers such that tomorrow we could get 99% of the population to boycott a company until they changed their practices, then we could demonstrate to consumers that they had a trenendous power to wield. At the moment people don't think like this.
mcantelon 11y ago
I guess the middle class is in denial. Global feudalism, directed by an unelected superclass, does indeed seem inevitable. Liberalism was useful to capital when labor was regionally tied (democracy improving morale and public education improving labor quality), but now it's back to basics. I'm interested in what belief systems will be employed to move people away from identities based on citizenship.
- fit2rule 11y ago
  >>> I'm interested in what belief systems will be employed to move people away from identities based on citizenship. Identities based on direct participation in citizenship, perhaps? http://ipfs.io/ http://ipfs.io/
bko 11y ago
To be fair, a lot of these corporate interests, if applicable broadly and without prejudice (unlikely), would just reinforce property right. For instance, articles such as these always sensationalize some of the issues. This article claims that the agreement would allow corporations to sue governments for instituting policies that hurt their bottom line. This is probably true but this would cover expropriation, which many people feel is unjust. I know many in US cringe at reports of Venezuela's government expropriating business through force. Many would agree that if you have a law abiding business it would be wrong for the government to come in and take all your capital as their own. What I imagine corporations believe is that this should be interpreted more broadly. For instance, if you agree that expropriation is bad, at what point does negatively harming a brand image effectively become expropriation? If a government makes you put a warning label? Plain packaging? Patent infringement? Unfortunately, even if you agree with very strong property rights, this will almost certainly not be applied evenly and without special carve-outs. edit: repatriation -> expropriation
- foolrush 11y ago
  “would just reinforce property right” In many instances, the property right is questionable. Much of the property right, such as with IP, was built on the back of a looser interpretation. Disney's earliest years of spoofing mainstream cultural vernacular with Mickey Mouse is perhaps the most well cited example. We could also question the legitimacy of the well documented fleecing of earlier African American musical artists during the 40s-70s that in turn amassed vast libraries of IP. Art moves as language and relies on an interaction with the language of the culture. The excessive IP is nothing more than a locking away of the keys that permitted the mega corporations to come to power in the first place. Illegitimate hegemony. Appropriated content. Preserved as capital by those with little to no involvement with its creation.
  - bko 11y ago
    I completely agree with you on IP and I am concerned over cooperation among countries to enforce IP protections. What I'm more concerned about is what I consider valid property rights such as physical property (equipment, your home, business) and your own body (expression, substances, etc). NPR had a great article about US tariff policy. It detailed a 3,000 page book that's used to set the appropriate tax: > The book lists the tax that importers have to pay on approximately every single thing in the universe — including, of course, T-shirts. They're right there under heading 6109: T-shirts, singlets, tank tops and similar garments, knitted or crocheted. The average tax rate on stuff coming into the U.S. is around 2 percent. The tax on T-shirts is much higher: 16.5 percent. That's what we'll be paying on the Planet Money men's shirts, which were made in Bangladesh. But the Planet Money women's shirts were made in Colombia — and those, according to the book of everything, come in duty-free, with no tariff at all. [0] To me it just seems very arbitrary and hence rife for corruption. [0] http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/12/06/247361423/the-giant-book-that-creates-and-destroys-entire-industries http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/12/06/247361423/the-gian...
ZoFreX 11y ago
The state of student loans in the US don't really seem like a warning sign for student loans in the UK, which work so differently I'd almost argue they should be called something other than a 'loan'. What's more it wasn't really a profit move (the universities don't make any more money) as much as a who should pay move. If you want to draw parallels between the situation in the US & Canada and the situation in the UK, I would point you at the Conservative government's attempt to stifle education on global warming, and the cosy relationship between the government and corporations, particularly the banks.
- pricechild 11y ago
  > What's more it wasn't really a profit move (the universities don't make any more money) as much as a who should pay move. I was aware of that argument at the time, but has it panned out that way? I wouldn't be surprised at figures showing either direction. e.g. 1. The initial loan/funding is still from "the government" so from day zero, the government is most likely paying 3x the amount. It'll be years before each student pays this back and until then, "the government" is hardest hit? 2. With the push to send more to university, there'll be more students this year than e.g. 4 years ago. Did projections hold up? At £27k/head it doesn't take a large % increase to make a considerable difference & I wouldn't be surprised to hear that universities have far larger incomes than the past or projected. 3. And then you get into the issue of whether the majority will ever manage to pay off these loans... will we 'all' end up paying for anyway in the end to cover the deficit...? Would it've been cheaper just to tax us to begin with before letting interest acrue?
- mercer 11y ago
  It could be seen as a political profit move though. I've once heard someone describe the whole university system (or what it's becoming) as a clever way to hide unemployment. Even better, you're making the unemployed themselves pay (loans) for the privilege of not being technically unemployed!
iamcurious 11y ago
for the first time in modern history, your kids won't be better off or live longer than you. That was not always the case. Wars, dictatorships, economic cycles, all affect how well a generation does.
- themartorana 11y ago
  True. Shouldn't have left that in there - it's a conflagration of a number of stats showing upward mobility for the next generation in a lot of the western world has stalled or is going backwards.
  - jbhatab 11y ago
    How so? Why? I'm definitely interested in the numbers and reasons behind that.
api 11y ago
I get the impression a good number of people are cheering it on. Hyperelitism and hatred of the poor or "stupid" seems a major zeitgeist of the age. People have given up on the idea that the human condition can be fundamentally improved.
fit2rule 11y ago
>>>the middle and lower classes are complicit In my opinion, the middle and lower classes don't vote enough, and therein lies the crux of complicity. If it were somehow required that you had to bring 8 other people with you to vote, if you knew of them - i.e. make it a 'thought-crime' - and knew they were openly stating that they were not going to vote - then it'd get fixed right up. i.e. a voters bounty for registered, un-voters. I suppose there are huge flaws in this, but I seriously think it'd be fun for a lot of people if there were suddenly 'vote sheriffs' out there, making sure that people exercised their right to apply power to the politics. People always deserve the whips and bonds they freely choose, when done in freedom. If todays democracy is merely the lesser evil, then a lesser evil even still is total democracy. At least, I favour organized means of encouraging every 18+ person, citizen, to vote. Voting is meant to solve problems created by incumbent possessors of force, who get too used to their power. (Note: I also do believe in the right to not vote - i.e. as protest over 'the system', but in the immediate reality of our world today, we need more people actually voting to support their point of view than just those who feel the need to express their point of view. Voting is existence.

derptacos 11y ago

Seems very dystopian, but truth in it. Is a revolution really the only answer?

jjoonathan 11y ago
God I hope not. Revolution has always been a shitshow and I don't even want to think how it would look given technological advancement since the last time around. There's reason to hope. As a nation we have faced bigger issues than this and come out on top. Besides, there are still a handful of decent ways out. Social policy like reducing the workweek to restore supply/demand balance in the labor market could work. So could basic/minimum income, although I suspect that it's politically untenable even though it would be cheaper in the big picture. The least efficient but most probable (IMO) approach would be to grow the size of our creaking, bloated menagerie of inefficient social programs. So far, capitalist societies have generally been far better than Marx assumed at figuring out how to implement the minimum possible social policy to stave off rebellion. I don't know whether to call it optimistic or pessimistic, but I suspect the trend will continue. Hopefully we won't go full Orwell in the process, but I wouldn't put money on it. We're already turnkey-Orwell and I think most of us can tell which way the wind is blowing. More optimistically, I think there's also a chance that market dynamics will shift for the better due to technological change. Sure, 3D printing has been overhyped to the moon and back, but if rents are increasing while the inefficiency of distributed production is decreasing, then eventually there's going to be a crossing point. Once everyone has self-replicating farms, power shifts back to the people and free market dynamics start working for the masses instead of against them. It'll require a ton of effort and investment to make it happen, but that makes it just the sort of thing to provide opportunity to the HN crowd :) /crazy speculation
- kenrikm 11y ago
  I can't think of a single revolution that ended with a better government replacing the existing one except for the American one. Russia, Cuba, Iran, etc.. don't make the odds seem likely.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - RodericDay 11y ago
    Sounds like the American educational system at work
  - yeureka 11y ago
    I can, specially in Europe. One good example might be the Portuguese Carnation Revolution that took place in 1974. It overthrew a corporatist dictatorship where private enterprise created a feudal system based on state sponsored monopolies handed out to a few families. The dictator himself was apparently modest in his life style, but his friends running the monopolies were very wealthy. Life for the common person improved significantly after the revolution with access to free health-care, more education and better worker rights.
    - killerpopiller 11y ago
      1989 eastern germany - we call it revolution
      - akavel 11y ago
        please note, that 1989 in eastern Europe was specifically towards democracy and capitalism, against communism and revolutionary state socialism!
  - joeyspn 11y ago
    Ever heard about the French Revolution?
junto 11y ago
I have an alternative, but I'm not sure how you implement it. The crux if the problem is the greed for profit. As consumers we act as individuals and the corporations like it that way. The key to controlling corporations is hitting them where it hurts, I.e. their wallets. If we could unite as consumers we would have the power to crush corporations who do not play fair. If we could find a way to unite consumers such that tomorrow we could get 99% of the population to boycott a company until they changed their practices, then we could demonstrate to consumers that they had a trenendous power to wield. At the moment people don't think like this.

mcantelon 11y ago

I guess the middle class is in denial. Global feudalism, directed by an unelected superclass, does indeed seem inevitable. Liberalism was useful to capital when labor was regionally tied (democracy improving morale and public education improving labor quality), but now it's back to basics. I'm interested in what belief systems will be employed to move people away from identities based on citizenship.

fit2rule 11y ago
>>> I'm interested in what belief systems will be employed to move people away from identities based on citizenship. Identities based on direct participation in citizenship, perhaps? http://ipfs.io/ http://ipfs.io/

bko 11y ago

To be fair, a lot of these corporate interests, if applicable broadly and without prejudice (unlikely), would just reinforce property right. For instance, articles such as these always sensationalize some of the issues. This article claims that the agreement would allow corporations to sue governments for instituting policies that hurt their bottom line. This is probably true but this would cover expropriation, which many people feel is unjust. I know many in US cringe at reports of Venezuela's government expropriating business through force. Many would agree that if you have a law abiding business it would be wrong for the government to come in and take all your capital as their own. What I imagine corporations believe is that this should be interpreted more broadly. For instance, if you agree that expropriation is bad, at what point does negatively harming a brand image effectively become expropriation? If a government makes you put a warning label? Plain packaging? Patent infringement? Unfortunately, even if you agree with very strong property rights, this will almost certainly not be applied evenly and without special carve-outs. edit: repatriation -> expropriation

foolrush 11y ago
“would just reinforce property right” In many instances, the property right is questionable. Much of the property right, such as with IP, was built on the back of a looser interpretation. Disney's earliest years of spoofing mainstream cultural vernacular with Mickey Mouse is perhaps the most well cited example. We could also question the legitimacy of the well documented fleecing of earlier African American musical artists during the 40s-70s that in turn amassed vast libraries of IP. Art moves as language and relies on an interaction with the language of the culture. The excessive IP is nothing more than a locking away of the keys that permitted the mega corporations to come to power in the first place. Illegitimate hegemony. Appropriated content. Preserved as capital by those with little to no involvement with its creation.
- bko 11y ago
  I completely agree with you on IP and I am concerned over cooperation among countries to enforce IP protections. What I'm more concerned about is what I consider valid property rights such as physical property (equipment, your home, business) and your own body (expression, substances, etc). NPR had a great article about US tariff policy. It detailed a 3,000 page book that's used to set the appropriate tax: > The book lists the tax that importers have to pay on approximately every single thing in the universe — including, of course, T-shirts. They're right there under heading 6109: T-shirts, singlets, tank tops and similar garments, knitted or crocheted. The average tax rate on stuff coming into the U.S. is around 2 percent. The tax on T-shirts is much higher: 16.5 percent. That's what we'll be paying on the Planet Money men's shirts, which were made in Bangladesh. But the Planet Money women's shirts were made in Colombia — and those, according to the book of everything, come in duty-free, with no tariff at all. [0] To me it just seems very arbitrary and hence rife for corruption. [0] http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/12/06/247361423/the-giant-book-that-creates-and-destroys-entire-industries http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/12/06/247361423/the-gian...

ZoFreX 11y ago

The state of student loans in the US don't really seem like a warning sign for student loans in the UK, which work so differently I'd almost argue they should be called something other than a 'loan'. What's more it wasn't really a profit move (the universities don't make any more money) as much as a who should pay move. If you want to draw parallels between the situation in the US & Canada and the situation in the UK, I would point you at the Conservative government's attempt to stifle education on global warming, and the cosy relationship between the government and corporations, particularly the banks.

pricechild 11y ago
> What's more it wasn't really a profit move (the universities don't make any more money) as much as a who should pay move. I was aware of that argument at the time, but has it panned out that way? I wouldn't be surprised at figures showing either direction. e.g. 1. The initial loan/funding is still from "the government" so from day zero, the government is most likely paying 3x the amount. It'll be years before each student pays this back and until then, "the government" is hardest hit? 2. With the push to send more to university, there'll be more students this year than e.g. 4 years ago. Did projections hold up? At £27k/head it doesn't take a large % increase to make a considerable difference & I wouldn't be surprised to hear that universities have far larger incomes than the past or projected. 3. And then you get into the issue of whether the majority will ever manage to pay off these loans... will we 'all' end up paying for anyway in the end to cover the deficit...? Would it've been cheaper just to tax us to begin with before letting interest acrue?
mercer 11y ago
It could be seen as a political profit move though. I've once heard someone describe the whole university system (or what it's becoming) as a clever way to hide unemployment. Even better, you're making the unemployed themselves pay (loans) for the privilege of not being technically unemployed!

iamcurious 11y ago

for the first time in modern history, your kids won't be better off or live longer than you. That was not always the case. Wars, dictatorships, economic cycles, all affect how well a generation does.

themartorana 11y ago
True. Shouldn't have left that in there - it's a conflagration of a number of stats showing upward mobility for the next generation in a lot of the western world has stalled or is going backwards.
- jbhatab 11y ago
  How so? Why? I'm definitely interested in the numbers and reasons behind that.

api 11y ago

I get the impression a good number of people are cheering it on. Hyperelitism and hatred of the poor or "stupid" seems a major zeitgeist of the age. People have given up on the idea that the human condition can be fundamentally improved.

fit2rule 11y ago

>>>the middle and lower classes are complicit In my opinion, the middle and lower classes don't vote enough, and therein lies the crux of complicity. If it were somehow required that you had to bring 8 other people with you to vote, if you knew of them - i.e. make it a 'thought-crime' - and knew they were openly stating that they were not going to vote - then it'd get fixed right up. i.e. a voters bounty for registered, un-voters. I suppose there are huge flaws in this, but I seriously think it'd be fun for a lot of people if there were suddenly 'vote sheriffs' out there, making sure that people exercised their right to apply power to the politics. People always deserve the whips and bonds they freely choose, when done in freedom. If todays democracy is merely the lesser evil, then a lesser evil even still is total democracy. At least, I favour organized means of encouraging every 18+ person, citizen, to vote. Voting is meant to solve problems created by incumbent possessors of force, who get too used to their power. (Note: I also do believe in the right to not vote - i.e. as protest over 'the system', but in the immediate reality of our world today, we need more people actually voting to support their point of view than just those who feel the need to express their point of view. Voting is existence.