This is fucking ridiculous. Scandal after scandal. How long are we going to put up with this?
In America, the political climate disgusts me. When it comes to the poor and the front-line workers, we're all about the strictest forms of accountability. Drug tests for basic aid. Punitive oversight of educators. But our richest, most powerful institutions are robbing us blind on the regular and getting away with it.
Since ancient history the rich have gotten away with doing as they please, and they always will. The real culprit is democracy's false promise that it can do anything to change this. Ultimately the masses will only take action if food or shelter is at risk.
This attitude is exactly what they are counting on - 80% of the people being oblivious to their crimes and 20% being upset but convinced nothing can be done. There have certainly been times when populist outrage has led to change or consequences for those at the top (in the US, try the 1890s, 1930s, 1960s, late 1980s).
The system also does a pretty good job of ensuring the masses are distracted. E.g. plenty of hype & reporting surrounding things like celebrities, sports, movies, and games.
To contrast that very little substantive reporting occurs on issues that matter. Then when finally a crisis ends (like the cold war) and we can hope to focus on improving justice and social issues we end up entering a new period to distract us like the drug.
More recently we can use the war on terror as a distraction from the financial crisis--note our preoccupation with ISIS instead of a focus on the social issues that are becoming an increasing drag on the US economy.
By coincidence I just read an article yesterday by Chris Hedges titled "The Myth of the Free Press" that elaborates on some of your points: http://tiny.cc/2h4xpx
The problem with populist outrage is that it only changes things when an ambitious leader shows up and takes advantage of the outrage for their own personal gain (dethroning the current ruler and putting themselves there).
Let's face it, humans need somebody to be on top. We don't know how to function otherwise. At least not for very long.
Have you ever heard the term "social primate"? If not, or if you do not accept that human beings belong into that category, there is not much of a discussion to be had.
> What's your basis for saying this? Do you have any way of verifying this claim?
A leader always emerges.
If you know of a counter-example, I'd love to hear it. But even in the smallest experiments I've run (group of friends trying to agree on where to have dinner), a leader always emerges and then consensus is reached.
How about something rather than someone on the top? The idea behind successful governments is system rather than person. Lets extrapolate this and design better systems based on rationality rather than short sighted greed. Then, if people like, they can elect a king who is tall and has a nice smile. He can cut ribbons and attend funerals while the real governance is left to rational systems. Kind of like what happens now, except that I doubt the rationality.
This is true, there is a something on top these days. But even in the olden days there was a something on top. Do you really think a king was able to do everything themselves? Much like a modern CEO they had a whole lot of help and only made the final calls and set general guidelines for things.
Incidentally Swizec, you are speaking to people primarily in the US. They have spent the last 200 years convincing themselves that what you say just isn't so regardless of whether or not it actually is.
Don't worry. Everyone here in Europe (and probably elsewhere too), has been spending the last few thousand years convincing themselves that this just isn't so.
And yet, despite all the overthrown governments, the toppled empires, and flat out revolutions - a leader always emerges. After a few years, the common population is always in pretty much the same boat they were before the revolution.
> Since ancient history the rich have gotten away with doing as they please, and they always will.
That's fundamentally what defines being rich. "Wealth" is just another word for "power", and "rich" just means possessed of substantially more wealth than average.
> The real culprit is democracy's false promise that it can do anything to change this.
Democracy seeks to redistribute some elements of power more equally, and is not completely unsuccessful in so doing in many real world systems. It does something to change the degree to which the rich get away with what they want -- simply by reducing the degree to which they are really rich.
OTOH, its offset often in real democratic politico-economic systems by other elements of the system -- e.g., capitalism -- which have the exact opposite effect.
"Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is about eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried." ~ Robert A. Heinlein
How about the intelligent management of the earth's resources?
For example, instead of humans wearing gold to impress each-other, we instead use gold for its properties.
It is the most efficient and effective use of resources with human concern that I am aware of... anyone with other ideas, I am open to listen and digest.
The developer "class" will be around to automate almost all job functionality as time continues. In this unique economic and functional opportunity that we have, what will we do with the time we have left? Will we create a world designed to support and nurture all human beings to grow their full potential, or will we be short-sighted and manipulative for momentary gain?
Either way, I have no expectations from this current culture.
Bingo. I believe you have nailed it. This is the eventual and (I believe) inevitable answer.
Open the code. Let anyone see how it functions if they care to take the time. Base it on real math. Real statistics. Remove the political sound bites from governance.
Factors the "market" doesn't take into account should be extrapolated and accounted for. What is the cost of a barrel of oil really? What about when it ruins a fishery or aquifer and heats up the planet? What about the fact it is a resource that is not renewable? So we are passing a burden to future generations in that they don't have the resource anymore. Not to mention a possibly ruined fishery. The market doesn't care about these things, and thus we get problem after problem (not to mention wars).
Governance of resources by nice hair and teeth and political soundbite and cronyism is ultimately a stupid way to do things and I can't imagine it will win the evolutionary battle of systems.
> we should experiment with newer forms of government...
This is so very true but almost certainly undoable without a some form of help from the rich and powerful.
For example, one positive (or negative depending on which side you're on) thing about depleting oil resources is that much of the Government financing relies on tax dollars collected from hydrocarbons. And thus little oil would effectively mean lower available budgets, lesser means/control etc. Especially for totalitarian Governments that are considerable more expensive to operate.
Unless of course entrepreneurs like Elon Musk solve the energy problem for them. :)
Think he may have stolen this from Winston Churchill.
"Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
Yes this a million times. The only change that I could see happening is if basic needs are met for all people across the board - such that food and shelter are never at risk.
"The real culprit is democracy's false promise that it can do anything to change this. Ultimately the masses will only take action if food or shelter is at risk."
Democratic Constitutional Republic, not a pure democracy. The entire existence of the American System was against the European oligarchy and for the establishment of American aristocracy (the founding brothers weren't saints, they were monied land-owning aristocrats).
The real problem is that the oligarchs in the City of London have continually subverted the American System and entangled us abroad (triple entente, anyone?), and have corrupted all our branches of government. The American Constitution, if we actually followed it, provides mechanisms to deal with problems such as this. Namely, the idea of equality under the law. Ah, but the justice system is corrupt to, up to and including SCOTUS.
Please stop conflating democracy with our Constitutional Republic, and also stop vilifying a system that is not in it's proper state, eg, you essentially imply that democracy is a fad because it's been shown to not work, when if fact it has worked in some cases so well that it became a threat to the oligarchs and they actively subverted it.
Our problem is the oligarchs, not the system itself.
The point of the branches is to prevent corruption. Saying “if we actually followed it” is like saying cyanide would be healthy “if it wasn't lethal.”
There is no intrinsic, “proper state” of a constitutional republic. If the Constitution did not permit the current situation, then it did not prevent it. Thus it has failed.
"If the Constitution did not permit the current situation, then it did not prevent it. Thus it has failed."
This will be the justification used to dismantle the idea of American national sovereignty then. I see your point and am trying very hard to understand, but I always understood that the constitution was something that needed protection, hence the various oaths of office, not that the constitution was expected to simply stand on it's own structure.
It was designed such that the various branches of power would cancel each other out. The bankers realized they could buy all the branches, including the fourth estate, and I think it is the people who are sworn to defend the constitution who have failed, not the constitution itself.
Your outlook scares me that it may be more widespread than I previously realized.
Yep, inequality sucks in the US but it's still one of the best places to live in the world. Why risk your middle class lifestyle by rioting and protesting when you have enough to get by?
Until we become a despot I don't see things changing very much.
A 2014 UN study on the happiest populations* doesn't even include the US in the top 10 (it scored #17). All of the countries in the list have some form of a mixed economy (ie. not full on socialism, but a much stronger social support system in place than the US).
So, there isn't even that much experimentation required to get a better system in the US. Rather, I'd say American's have thoroughly been indoctrinated against social support constructs that you only have yourselves to blame (you only need to look at how underfunded the public school systems, police, college are).
I'm not arguing against the idea of mixed economies, but I don't find the argument that a bunch of countries produce happy citizens and the same countries have mixed economies very compelling. For instance, you don't mention the inverse. How do mixed economies due on the unhappiness scale? Is there some bare standard of mixed economy (for instance the US does have a mixed economy with a social support system at many levels)? Is there something else that is more related than their economic model for happiness?
I personally look at that data set and find it telling that those are all small countries by population size, wealthy and have lots of mineral resources per capita. For instance, are people in Iceland more happy than people in Corpus Cristi, Tx (which gets routinely rated as a happy US city and is bigger than Iceland).
You are right, my conclusion was linking happiness with mixed economies, that was not from the report--the link is intuitively obvious to me, but likely hard to prove.
I've seen a study in the past showing the relationship between happiness and financial income. It showed that happiness largely peaked when you had enough money to support your basic needs and do a few extra fun things. Any additional income didn't do much to help people feel happier.
So, my conclusion based on that was that a mixed economy where everyone's basic needs are largely met seems like a good way to keep it's population basically happy. The study seemed to validate that somewhat.
In contrast in the US where the growing bottom percent of the population faces stress over basic needs, and many in the middle class are one health care diagnosis away from bankruptcy seemed like a good indicator that the current American economic system is not ideal, and has a clear direction that it could take to solve these issues.
From the looks of it, it seems like the amount of racial homogeneity appears to be well correlated to the happiness quotient. Maybe that is the bigger factor in happiness. And a more homogeneous society might be one that tolerates more socialism. Another interesting question is what is cause and what is effect here. Does the amount of happiness of a society determine what kind of economic structures the members prefer? Or does the nature of the economic structures drive happiness? And how close are they coupled? And what makes happiness the right metric to optimize for, compared to say contentedness, or equality?
If you look at the numbers closely we see that 12% less is put into the public system in the US than the OECD average. This pattern is true of most things in America, you put more dollars into health care and education than other countries, but most of that ends up in private systems. So, if you have money you get the best education or healthcare in the world. If, you however you don't fit into that bucket what you get is far less.
My experience from those that I know in the US (middle class) either have their children in private schools, or they choose where to live based on which neighbourhoods have a good public school. This behaviour, as far as I am aware, is unheard of in those countries in the top 10.
Regarding the questions you raise, some can be answered if you follow the link to the original report.
What bothers me the most about your response is to completely discount a well researched report because it doesn't answer all possible questions. Sure, maybe race plays a role. But, if you want to answer that you need to ask different questions than this report did.
What you need to do is look at the report as a whole and reflect on it. Sure the US may have the greatest GDP, but in so many other factors lags behind other countries, is optimizing for financial return really what we as a nation need to strive for?--That is the takeaway that you should contemplate, not nitpicking over answers that the report didn't set out to address.
I guess I'm old-school. Asking questions doesn't discount anything. If people can't ask questions, it seems like conversations become boring one-sided monologues. Your mileage apparently varies.
The folks who think that the US is one of the best places to live in the world are usually folks who've never stepped outside of the US.
I've lived in several US states, a variety of European and Asian countries, and have travelled broadly - and the US, I put on a par with post-soviet Russia in terms of standards of living - and in terms of cultural attitudes.
It's amazing how similar the two are, to someone external to both worlds.
The US is a big place and it really depends on the regions that you lived in. Much like you can't judge all of China based on Beijing or Shanghai. For example, there are regions in China that are predominantly Muslim.
That said, it also depends on what you view as downsides to living in a place. For example, South Korean isn't considered backwards by any means, but you do have mandatory military service, which the US does not have (to the point that even a Korean born & raised in another country might be forced into service when going back to Korea to visit relatives).
In the US, I lived in (in descending order of time spent there)
Illinois, Chicago and rural.
Virginia, several locations.
New Jersey.
New York.
LA, Norcal.
Ohio
New Mexico
Which I'll grant isn't "everywhere", but is a decent sample of East, West, Midwest, and various shades such as "mountain man" and "rust belt" between.
Fully aware, I've been to Xi'an and parts of China most folks don't even know exist - driving across large swathes of the planet is one of my favourite hobbies. Driving west to east across Russia is great, as you barely notice the change as you go, as it's HUGE, but you couldn't mistake, say, Ulan Ude for Novosibirsk in a million years.
Conscription is a potential downside, yes, but I look more at things like "do the people seem fundamentally happy, or neurotic and really messed up?". In the US and Russia, the latter applies. In the US, they all take prescription meds. In Russia, they drink until they don't care any more. Not symptoms of healthy, happy societies.
I don't know where I actually would say is "better" - most of the places I've been to where I've gone "this is nice" have been devoid of humans. We have a knack for turning things to shit.
Really depends on where you live I guess, the US is huge compared to european countries. I live in a pretty progressive area in the Midwest and have a pretty high standard of living.
Middle class people generally aren't risking their status by rioting. I'd have to imagine that the sort of people firebombing random businesses and police cars probably don't feel like they have that much at stake.
As far as risking status by protesting, by that logic, no one should have boycotted segregated institutions. "Separate and unequal, but adequate", would have been the mantra.
At least one of the trigger was food shortage, or the fear of food shortage. The first riots were "bread riots". Hence the infamous apocryphal quote by Marie Anotoinette "If they can't have bread, let them eat cake".
Obviously, the only time a riot become a revolution is when you have a perfect storm of food shortage, social inequality, increased literacy, etc.
Which is why we need an anti-rich society. Eat the 1% and redistribute their wealth. I can only hope that a distributed post scarcity society and technology base can render their money worthless.
Simply put, we prioritize economic health above justice. American citizens, as a population, literally love money above all else.... All the people in existing contracts need to do to justify continuing is raise a fear of economic instability as power changes hands. All of a sudden, the rich are literally "too large to fail" as they ARE the goddamn economy. Only the poor can afford to go bankrupt, according to our government.
Our government literally makes a mockery of justice out of attempting to prop up our economy.
This is how the Regulatory Capture has come to be. None of those out protecting consumers from the finance industry are doing what really needs to be done, because they know that their next job is likely to be at one of the institutions they are investigating.
I believe it was This American Life that recently did a podcast that went into depth on this issue.
Let's take this a different direction for a moment... Why is it that the IT industry screams that they have a labor shortage when salaries are flat. With million dollar salaries in finance you would think that industry must have a severe labor shortage.
They just pay out more of their (large) profits than tech business do. eg as if Google paid 100% bonuses every year as they are so profitable, rather than retaining cash, paying shareholders and paying executives a lot mainly retaining cash though).
It's good of you to admit that, but I have to ask: why? Why is 3 million so different from 200k as to be worth being willing to set aside ethics / become antisocial?
This fresh scandal isn't even being reported on in most of the MSM. Even if it was, it is hard for people to connect the abstraction of a banking scandal with the economic problems they face.
I don't see a way out of this through any of the legitimate channels.
What I find amusing is how anti-tax activists are generally unconcerned with this kind of behavior which acts in-effect like an "invisible hand" tax on the entire metals market.
It's not even about fixing this one issue. Or improving my life.
It's about enforcing fairness, and not continuing to signal to the rich and powerful that really, they can get away with anything. That their wealth and power doesn't place them above the law.
And I believe that in the end, when abuses like this start getting punished in a meaningful way, and moves are made to prevent further abuse, all our lives WILL actually improve.
That their wealth and power doesn't place them above the law.
Except it always has and I don't see why that would change as long as there is scarcity in some form.
What it comes down to is cost/benefit of enforcing "fairness" or "equity." If someone has a lot of resources and they are using them to employ people or otherwise keep institutions that people rely on running - even if they are in the long term toxic institutions - there is momentum to not disturb that system in order to shield the people downstream from layoffs and disorder etc...
This is actually our democratic system in action, where the lawmakers and enforcers are put in place by voters, who respond to jobs, social investment and stability in their regions. Even if the people who are the mechanisms for those benefits are assholes and crooks, on par as long as there is relative stability and growth it is better to keep their actions from disrupting the ecosystem.
Arguably it will eventually be too corrupt to stand and crumble, but if the way that capital and goods are allocated is through a private consumer-producer mechanism with state power applied to maintain or promote this system, this is the inevitable result.
In the end, the majority of people aren't so dedicated to the value of fairness/equality that they are willing to risk their livelihoods on it.
Corruption, and the sense of entitlement it gives powerful people when they can get away with it, certainly does (in the long term) make a difference to every person on the planet when it is kept under control.
What problems qualify as "my" problems versus someone else's problems? Also, if there is nothing wrong with the world, why are you defending your opinion here? Doesn't doing so imply that you perceive opposing opinions as flawed or inaccurate enough to be worth debating? If so, whose problem is that?
Well, I would have more money. I don't know if that's enough to have a better life but I don't think robbing someone and then saying you’re going to be happier without needing to clean that junk is a reasonable defense.
No, you would not. You'll have more money when you become financially literate. Until then, no amount of "justice" is going to put more money in your pocket.
In America, the political climate disgusts me. When it comes to the poor and the front-line workers, we're all about the strictest forms of accountability. Drug tests for basic aid. Punitive oversight of educators. But our richest, most powerful institutions are robbing us blind on the regular and getting away with it.