Amazing retort, but doesn't correct the misapprehension that whatever is traded for other people's labour is a 'product', or that people who deal in 'publicity' or usury are 'productive'.
Presidential predictions for 2024?
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Seattle
Valued Senior Member
That's because there is no misapprehension. Manufacturing isn't the only productive activity on the planet.
No, there's also craft, farming and mining.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
Why are those more important to you than entertainment, finance, tech, etc? Why do you feel the need to define which are important and which aren't?
It's not a question of importance or to whom; it's question of what an activity contributes to the assets of the community. Having been entertained adds nothing to the storehouses. Being advertised-at doesn't provide anyone with a better shelter or warmer clothes. An unconscionable amount of energy, time and human effort is dumped into endeavours aimed at no substantial gain for anyone - except, of course the con artists who take real things (cars, yachts, diamond tiaras, high-rise buildings) made by real people in exchange for fantasy.
Do you really not get that funneling more and more of the effort of working people into non-productive enterprises and more and more natural resources into useless luxuries for those unproductive people drains a society of its communal wealth - leaves increasing numbers without the necessities of life?
If you refuse to understand that, you'll never understand anything.
There is a balance of necessities versus luxuries to be drawn but you can't have a productive society that doesn't reward frivolities or ,again one that doesn't recognize that the basic necessities have to be available to all people .
That is morally right but also practically essential.
I hate the idea of people getting easy money from the financial industries and I think the answer is for them to be regulated.But that can only happen if there is the political will and if the electorate supports it.
With the countries and the world divided into different sectors of interest I don't see how that can arise except at different stages of development and for differing lengths of time.
With the speed things are moving the best I hope for is to keep the show on the road and to do as little harm as we can while we are here for our sort tenure.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
So, if I'm not a Communist I'll never understand anything? You live in a world where Jeff Bezos is unproductive and any "working man" is? How does starting Amazon contribute to leaving increasing numbers without the necessities of life?
I've been thinking about Steinbeck recently because of JD Vance. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy (which I've only read bits of, but I think I've got a good sense of it) is kind of like the antithesis of everything Steinbeck ever wrote. Steinbeck does not romanticize Americans in any sense whatsoever, but he understood and contextualized their perceived shortcomings in such a manner that preserves their dignity, and Vance just sees their shortcomings and failures and pretty much condemns them for it;
This could go either way. People do often take care of the "ne'er-do-wells" or "black sheep" in their families and communities.
A lot of people might not care for whatever job they've got right now, but I believe that most people do want to work and keep busy. And Americans generally regard industriousness as a virtue, and tend to stigmatize those who don't work and those who don't want to work. I mean, would you have gone on the dole had it been available to you? Probably not, right? Neither would I, if I didn't need it.
We don't really have any sort of welfare or assistance quite like that in the US, but I've known plenty of people in the UK, Europe and elsewhere who've gone on the dole for periods of time, and they used it more like a sabbatical of sorts. They worked on projects or developed skills for which they would have had far fewer hours had they been working at another job during those periods. In the US, I knew a guy who lost some random crappy job, went on unemployment for like 9 months or something, and used that time to develop his guitar fingerpicking skills. He got really good and is a highly regarded fingerpicking guitarist. I say "knew" because he died about 15 years back.
That balance can never be achieved unless we have a clear understanding of our population's needs and how much surplus we have to expand on luxuries - and how to allocate both, so that no segment of the population takes necessities from the majority in order to indulge itself in luxury.
So long as there is excess of land, resources and labour to exploit (even as long as those resources are on other continents), the economy can keep growing and producing enough surplus to support luxuries for all. But when the purveyors of luxuries proliferate and are rewarded out of all proportion, the society grows top-heavy, sinks into debt and economic stress; an increasing number of potentially productive people fall out the bottom - are marginalized, reduced to charity or succumb to the temptation of crime (thus draining the communal resources even further) and finally become destitute. This is not a uniquely modern situation; it's happened again and again... just before a collapse.
And that cannot happen as long as the electorate is bamboozled into believing that non-productive activities are more valuable than productive ones and therefore accept that non-productive (or even destructive) people deserve many times the recompense of productive ones. As long as wealth is counted in money rather than tangible assets, a great fog of fantasy permeates every legislative and judicial body, and no sensible decisions can be made.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
I think we had a welfare system that more closely resembled that of the UK before the Clinton era. He tried to do something about the people who just stayed on welfare from generation to generation by limiting how long you could be on welfare and there were some other requirements such as training, etc.
I have no problem with someone who was laid off taking his time finding more work if he could live on the unemployment check he was receiving. He paid in to that, he was laid off, that's what it is for.
I also don't have any problem with those who chose an "alternative" lifestyle as long as you figure out a way to fund it. I met a girl while rock climbing and she was about to go to the "base" in Antarctica for a 6 month contract. She and her boyfriend were going there, the pay was good and then when she got back she would rock climb full time until the money was getting low and then she would figure out another way to make money for a while.
While scuba diving I met a guy who worked on a fishing trawler in Alaska for the season (dangerous work) and made a of of money doing that and came back to Seattle in the off season, lived in an RV and drove around scuba diving until it was Alaska fishing season again.
Yes ,the electorate is bamboozled but it is also responsible for the collective choices it makes.
It is often asked why parts of the electorate vote for policies that are against its own interests.
Is the answer that the electorate as a whole ,just like the individuals within it only learn from the mistakes they make?
There is the analogy of changing the course of a tanker at sea and how long it takes.
If we apply that the the direction of a society as a whole we can add in the context that the environment in which this decision making is evolving is shifting under our feet so that any collective decisions we end up making feel like shots in the dark and hoping for the best.
True ,certain hopefully universal considerations will continue to apply but much more effort and attention seems to be needed to navigating these waters as the world changes around us at a faster and faster rate.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
Whether people vote against their own self-interest is subjective. You may think it is against their self-interest and you may be wrong. It may also be against their own narrow self-interest but they know it's the better policy.
Don't just assume they are stupid or ill informed. They may be of course but that's more than likely not the case.
Don't just assume they are stupid or ill informed. They may be of course but that's more than likely not the case.
Yes ,I was thinking that but I didn't write it down.
Of course they vote in what they think is in their self interest whether or not they are being tricked into doing so.
And ,if they conclude later they were wrong they will vote differently another time.
But time is another of the luxuries that we may not be able to afford with the pace of change.
Which is why each collective decision feels a bit like a shot in the dark.
A vote for Trump feels like a vote for selling Ukraine down the river.(even if Ukraine will not go into that dark night peaceably)
The tanker is heading for an iceberg and the officers are still arguing about whether a change of course is recommended, half of them denying that the iceberg even exists. The captain is tied to his chair and gagged. We're probably not gonna make it.
Assuming they're allowed to vote at all, and their vote will be counted.
America, too. Read project 2025.
Any alternative is a reprieve - how long, we don't know.
It is entirely possible that not enough of us killed our parents as they slept.
The thing is that GenX is largely defined by its failures, so in many cases it's hard to take responsibility for what isn't there. But even the parts that are about us failing to transcend our Boomer forebears are still about us. (Boomers, for their own part, still can't grasp that, and tend to blame others for not taking r―… y'know, never mind.)
Meanwhile, look, I get that sometimes assessment according to the reality taking place doesn't suit your fancy, but the turn to demand for satisfaction is about as empty and on cue as you can get.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
I think you are just proving that abortions should be made easier. I don't know what the Republicans were thinking of but I'm guessing most of them aren't aware of you? Is anyone aware of you, outside of Sciforums that is?
It is entirely possible that not enough of us killed our parents as they slept.
The thing is that GenX is largely defined by its failures, so in many cases it's hard to take responsibility for what isn't there. But even the parts that are about us failing to transcend our Boomer forebears are still about us. (Boomers, for their own part, still can't grasp that, and tend to blame others for not taking r―… y'know, never mind.)
Meanwhile, look, I get that sometimes assessment according to the reality taking place doesn't suit your fancy, but the turn to demand for satisfaction is about as empty and on cue as you can get.
Have you made your mark or is this it?
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
11?
Honestly, you've spent how many years, now, inkwelling me? Clearly, I left a mark.
Not sure who saw it, or even care about it, but the 1st/2nd Presidential Debate - the first with the two official nominees - took place last night on ABC. There was a clear winner, as pretty much expected, although whether it will affect (m)any currently undecideds, let alone result in people changing their decisions, I don't know.
Trump is currently flooding social media and whoever will listen to him with the delusion that he won (spoiler alert: he was trounced) and his Fox propaganda machine (and obviously the rest of his GOP) is doing everything they can to spin it that way. He went straight to reporters to do post-debate appearances, something you generally only see with people who feel they didn't do great and need to try to bolster their message, but Trump is claiming that it was his "best performance ever" in a debate. It's seriously delusional. She played him like a drum, giving the answer to questions she wanted to get out before baiting him with something irrelevant she knew he wouldn't be able to ignore.
Here's a good review by NPR: https://www.npr.org/2024/09/11/g-s1-22023/debate-harris-trump-takeaways
Trump is currently flooding social media and whoever will listen to him with the delusion that he won (spoiler alert: he was trounced) and his Fox propaganda machine (and obviously the rest of his GOP) is doing everything they can to spin it that way. He went straight to reporters to do post-debate appearances, something you generally only see with people who feel they didn't do great and need to try to bolster their message, but Trump is claiming that it was his "best performance ever" in a debate. It's seriously delusional. She played him like a drum, giving the answer to questions she wanted to get out before baiting him with something irrelevant she knew he wouldn't be able to ignore.
Here's a good review by NPR: https://www.npr.org/2024/09/11/g-s1-22023/debate-harris-trump-takeaways
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Totally agree. Trump was his usual rambling insulting 5 yr old self. Harris made her points clearly and intelligently and calmly roasted Trump on a spit like a fat sow. I couldn't be more impressed with her performance. Oh...and btw, Trump says undocumented immigrants are eating dogs and cats in Springfield MO. Just so you know...
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