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On November 27 2013 02:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2013 02:10 Acrofales wrote:On November 27 2013 01:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 27 2013 01:35 Acrofales wrote:On November 27 2013 01:21 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 26 2013 21:14 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 19:17 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 14:47 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 14:06 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:
[quote]
Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter.
Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses.
We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. We live in times where you are more free and more prosperous than any other time in history in any reasonable objective measure you might choose. People claiming how bad things are compared to imaginary period in the past simply do not know the past. Things can be better and we should try to make them better, but saying there was point in a past where they were better is just either ignorance of that past or completely skewed perspective. I don't think we live in the most prosperous time. Real wages have stagnated over the last 35 years, working hours have gone up. Third world diseases that were eradicated are returning. More children are starving. there is also less democracy(labor unions have been destroyed) and a more atomized society. I'd also argue that western culture peaked in the enlightenment when science and philosophy was like pop culture today, but it has been on the decline ever since. Also on your earlier point, i'd point out that our current system was called wage-slavery and was a mainstream position by american factory girls in the 19th century. There are also arguments by good writers/historians that note that slavery for black people never really ended until after WW2, as black life was criminalized after they were freed-leading to a life that had just as little freedom as slavery. Being poor has been criminalized again over the past 35 years under the neoliberal period with the war on drugs. Language and political power has an amazing amount of delusion to it though. It sees itself as logical, objective and fair. It's oppression is paternalistic, as it sees its subjects as inferior, stupid people. When it's subjects call their oppression wage slavery, they will change the name to wage labor. When it's subjects call their journalism propaganda, they change its name to public relations. Minor fluctuations of wealth in last 30 years are not what my post was concerned with, even if I agreed with you that real wages are good sole measure of prosperity when comparing different periods. And obviously my post was concerning modern first world countries, I hoped I would not have to spell that in full. Since we were discussing political system in US/West I thought it was clear. As for amount of democracy if you find some measure of it that you can quantify and compare different periods please show me how it declined. Claiming that western culture peaked in the enlightenment is exactly the lack of knowledge of the past that I was talking about. Enlightenment was important period, but science and philosophy was not like pop culture today. It was enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy and most of the population was living in conditions none today experienced. The rest is a rant not related to my post, as I specifically said things are not all perfect today, so I will ignore it. I was talking only about America and the western countries that have undergone very similar political changes. When i was talking about third world diseases, the ones such as Rheumatic fever, that didn't used to exist in the west, now does exist-at least in New Zealand. poverty has risen everywhere, i believe in America its something like 50million people going to bed hungry. Your right that real wages is not 100% reliable. government social spending has also been repeatedly cut as well. Families with 1 adult on min wage used to be able to survive, but now they cant. not everyone is poorer though. CEO's managed to increase their salaries from 30x the average person to over 300x the average persons income. You might argue that only the wealthy could enjoy philosophy and science in the enlightenment, but a historian-Jonathan Rose, wrote a good scholarly account of how 19th century British working class was full of 'proletarian autodidacts with a passionate pursuit of knowledge'. Dickens, Tolstoy, ect was all very popular at the time. todays culture is mostly driven on profits and seduction. The fact that tv shows will only enter the production phase if they are able to gain viewers already dramatically narrows the spectrum of mainstream culture that we will see. i think image based mediums are just very seductive. For example Cicero noted that the Colosseum drew the plebs attention away from political affairs. Poverty in the US is measured before government taxes and transfers. After, the poverty rate has been in steady decline: ![[image loading]](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5tlinnN9fZQ/Uju3PbmbNMI/AAAAAAAAELg/bsF9QXTaowU/s400/poverty+2.jpg) Link... and just about everyone has seen a real increase in income: ![[image loading]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/72070179/ATI.PNG) If you want to bask in the good ol' days, look to Japan. Is that adjusted for inflation? Otherwise poverty has actually gotten quite a bit worse. Both charts use inflation adjusted figures. Okay, just making sure. Not that I doubted that poverty has gotten less in the US throughout the 21st century... and not only that, but any other measure of quality of life people care to dream up will show an improvement too. But that's a kind of pointless measure. I think if you look at quality of life in most areas of Africa or South America, you'll find that it has actually gone down. Argentina was actually one of the richest countries in the world at the turn of the 20th century. Africa was a mess already, but at least it didn't have the problems of rampant overpopulation it has to deal with now (same for large parts of Asia). Yeah, Argentina's a mess. Health and income in most developing countries have been improving substantially though.
Depends on what you measure. I expect poverty has gotten worse, because there are simply more people. However, the standard of living in general has improved vastly, because more and more areas have access to schools, clean drinking water and (very) basic medical care. That means health and education are significantly improved since the 19th century. People may still starve to death in ramshackle self-built huts in large parts of the world, but at least their babies live to starve to death at school, rather than dying from cholera at age 3.
EDIT: I am assuming it is even possible to make a meaningful comparison of poverty between the vastly different ways of living in developing nations at the start of the 20th century and now. Large-scale urbanization for one has completely changed the way people live.
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On November 27 2013 02:32 FallDownMarigold wrote:
quote]...some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase; and in the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.
--Pope Francis
What a guy. Seems vaguely relevant to US politics. [/QUOTE]
The media is continually spinning an image of this new Papacy, which if not fundamentally dishonest, is at least insufferably ignorant. They either commit the sin of omission, or because they lack a proper understanding of the teachings of his predecessors, therefore they gratuitously spin the image of a "revolutionary" Pope, bending to the winds of modern opinion.
For those of us who entertain respect for Rerum Novarum, it is obvious that it does not muddle its feet in the waters of the tired and feeble debate of capitalism vs socialism. Yes, it teaches that there is an explicit duty by the wealthy to consider the human ends of his actions, beyond certain assumptions justified by the exercise of impersonal forces. In Catholic doctrine, even if trickle-down theory worked as the most efficient form of uplifting the material conditions of the poor, it would still not be sufficient to consider the cultivation of greed as an acceptable moral practice. Salvation does not come by secondary, depersonalised virtues.
As the same time, the Catholic Church has unambiguously condemned the cultivation of envy among the poor, or the destruction of private property. The hypocrisy of the demagogue who destroys the greedy rich by inciting greed among the poor, whose intellect is stranded by the mere appearance of inequalities rather than the ethical orientation of rich and poor alike, who robs humanity of its moral agency by painting one class of men as innately corrupt, and another as innately helpless, who regards himself and his fellow ideologues as the only exceptions to the rule that all men are inherently venial and incapable of altruism, is an almost unspeakable banality in our hubristic age.
Catholic doctrine criticises aspects of both materialistic philosophies, but the journalistic community, relatively ignorant and disinterested in diverging from the prefabricated ping-pong of their profession, rushes in like a pack of mandarins, and cherry-picks itself into the delusion that "the Pope agrees with me."
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On November 27 2013 02:47 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2013 02:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 27 2013 02:10 Acrofales wrote:On November 27 2013 01:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 27 2013 01:35 Acrofales wrote:On November 27 2013 01:21 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 26 2013 21:14 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 19:17 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 14:47 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 14:06 mcc wrote:
[quote]
We live in times where you are more free and more prosperous than any other time in history in any reasonable objective measure you might choose. People claiming how bad things are compared to imaginary period in the past simply do not know the past. Things can be better and we should try to make them better, but saying there was point in a past where they were better is just either ignorance of that past or completely skewed perspective. I don't think we live in the most prosperous time. Real wages have stagnated over the last 35 years, working hours have gone up. Third world diseases that were eradicated are returning. More children are starving. there is also less democracy(labor unions have been destroyed) and a more atomized society. I'd also argue that western culture peaked in the enlightenment when science and philosophy was like pop culture today, but it has been on the decline ever since. Also on your earlier point, i'd point out that our current system was called wage-slavery and was a mainstream position by american factory girls in the 19th century. There are also arguments by good writers/historians that note that slavery for black people never really ended until after WW2, as black life was criminalized after they were freed-leading to a life that had just as little freedom as slavery. Being poor has been criminalized again over the past 35 years under the neoliberal period with the war on drugs. Language and political power has an amazing amount of delusion to it though. It sees itself as logical, objective and fair. It's oppression is paternalistic, as it sees its subjects as inferior, stupid people. When it's subjects call their oppression wage slavery, they will change the name to wage labor. When it's subjects call their journalism propaganda, they change its name to public relations. Minor fluctuations of wealth in last 30 years are not what my post was concerned with, even if I agreed with you that real wages are good sole measure of prosperity when comparing different periods. And obviously my post was concerning modern first world countries, I hoped I would not have to spell that in full. Since we were discussing political system in US/West I thought it was clear. As for amount of democracy if you find some measure of it that you can quantify and compare different periods please show me how it declined. Claiming that western culture peaked in the enlightenment is exactly the lack of knowledge of the past that I was talking about. Enlightenment was important period, but science and philosophy was not like pop culture today. It was enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy and most of the population was living in conditions none today experienced. The rest is a rant not related to my post, as I specifically said things are not all perfect today, so I will ignore it. I was talking only about America and the western countries that have undergone very similar political changes. When i was talking about third world diseases, the ones such as Rheumatic fever, that didn't used to exist in the west, now does exist-at least in New Zealand. poverty has risen everywhere, i believe in America its something like 50million people going to bed hungry. Your right that real wages is not 100% reliable. government social spending has also been repeatedly cut as well. Families with 1 adult on min wage used to be able to survive, but now they cant. not everyone is poorer though. CEO's managed to increase their salaries from 30x the average person to over 300x the average persons income. You might argue that only the wealthy could enjoy philosophy and science in the enlightenment, but a historian-Jonathan Rose, wrote a good scholarly account of how 19th century British working class was full of 'proletarian autodidacts with a passionate pursuit of knowledge'. Dickens, Tolstoy, ect was all very popular at the time. todays culture is mostly driven on profits and seduction. The fact that tv shows will only enter the production phase if they are able to gain viewers already dramatically narrows the spectrum of mainstream culture that we will see. i think image based mediums are just very seductive. For example Cicero noted that the Colosseum drew the plebs attention away from political affairs. Poverty in the US is measured before government taxes and transfers. After, the poverty rate has been in steady decline: Link... and just about everyone has seen a real increase in income: If you want to bask in the good ol' days, look to Japan. Is that adjusted for inflation? Otherwise poverty has actually gotten quite a bit worse. Both charts use inflation adjusted figures. Okay, just making sure. Not that I doubted that poverty has gotten less in the US throughout the 21st century... and not only that, but any other measure of quality of life people care to dream up will show an improvement too. But that's a kind of pointless measure. I think if you look at quality of life in most areas of Africa or South America, you'll find that it has actually gone down. Argentina was actually one of the richest countries in the world at the turn of the 20th century. Africa was a mess already, but at least it didn't have the problems of rampant overpopulation it has to deal with now (same for large parts of Asia). Yeah, Argentina's a mess. Health and income in most developing countries have been improving substantially though. Depends on what you measure. I expect poverty has gotten worse, because there are simply more people. However, the standard of living in general has improved vastly, because more and more areas have access to schools, clean drinking water and (very) basic medical care. That means health and education are significantly improved since the 19th century. People may still starve to death in ramshackle self-built huts in large parts of the world, but at least their babies live to starve to death at school, rather than dying from cholera at age 3. EDIT: I am assuming it is even possible to make a meaningful comparison of poverty between the vastly different ways of living in developing nations at the start of the 20th century and now. Large-scale urbanization for one has completely changed the way people live.
From the World Bank:
Poverty Trends in the Developing World
At least 721 million fewer people live in extreme poverty in the world today than 30 years ago. Poverty reduction surpassed expectations—the Millennium Developing Goal 1 of halving extreme poverty between 1990 and 2015 was reached five years ahead of time.
Link
progress...
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On November 27 2013 01:21 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 21:14 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 19:17 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 14:47 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 14:06 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 12:45 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 11:39 Tula wrote:On November 26 2013 10:06 KwarK wrote:
I'm gonna stick with my "Nazis were shitty people" theory if it's all the same to you Moltke. And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously. Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page. Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it. Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound. On November 26 2013 10:10 IgnE wrote:
The world is the will to power. Legal conditions are simply anemic restrictions on the will of life, and are therefore subordinate to its goals. As Nietzsche would say:
A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness. Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum). Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter. Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses. We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. We live in times where you are more free and more prosperous than any other time in history in any reasonable objective measure you might choose. People claiming how bad things are compared to imaginary period in the past simply do not know the past. Things can be better and we should try to make them better, but saying there was point in a past where they were better is just either ignorance of that past or completely skewed perspective. I don't think we live in the most prosperous time. Real wages have stagnated over the last 35 years, working hours have gone up. Third world diseases that were eradicated are returning. More children are starving. there is also less democracy(labor unions have been destroyed) and a more atomized society. I'd also argue that western culture peaked in the enlightenment when science and philosophy was like pop culture today, but it has been on the decline ever since. Also on your earlier point, i'd point out that our current system was called wage-slavery and was a mainstream position by american factory girls in the 19th century. There are also arguments by good writers/historians that note that slavery for black people never really ended until after WW2, as black life was criminalized after they were freed-leading to a life that had just as little freedom as slavery. Being poor has been criminalized again over the past 35 years under the neoliberal period with the war on drugs. Language and political power has an amazing amount of delusion to it though. It sees itself as logical, objective and fair. It's oppression is paternalistic, as it sees its subjects as inferior, stupid people. When it's subjects call their oppression wage slavery, they will change the name to wage labor. When it's subjects call their journalism propaganda, they change its name to public relations. Minor fluctuations of wealth in last 30 years are not what my post was concerned with, even if I agreed with you that real wages are good sole measure of prosperity when comparing different periods. And obviously my post was concerning modern first world countries, I hoped I would not have to spell that in full. Since we were discussing political system in US/West I thought it was clear. As for amount of democracy if you find some measure of it that you can quantify and compare different periods please show me how it declined. Claiming that western culture peaked in the enlightenment is exactly the lack of knowledge of the past that I was talking about. Enlightenment was important period, but science and philosophy was not like pop culture today. It was enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy and most of the population was living in conditions none today experienced. The rest is a rant not related to my post, as I specifically said things are not all perfect today, so I will ignore it. I was talking only about America and the western countries that have undergone very similar political changes. When i was talking about third world diseases, the ones such as Rheumatic fever, that didn't used to exist in the west, now does exist-at least in New Zealand. poverty has risen everywhere, i believe in America its something like 50million people going to bed hungry. Your right that real wages is not 100% reliable. government social spending has also been repeatedly cut as well. Families with 1 adult on min wage used to be able to survive, but now they cant. not everyone is poorer though. CEO's managed to increase their salaries from 30x the average person to over 300x the average persons income. You might argue that only the wealthy could enjoy philosophy and science in the enlightenment, but a historian-Jonathan Rose, wrote a good scholarly account of how 19th century British working class was full of 'proletarian autodidacts with a passionate pursuit of knowledge'. Dickens, Tolstoy, ect was all very popular at the time. todays culture is mostly driven on profits and seduction. The fact that tv shows will only enter the production phase if they are able to gain viewers already dramatically narrows the spectrum of mainstream culture that we will see. i think image based mediums are just very seductive. For example Cicero noted that the Colosseum drew the plebs attention away from political affairs. Poverty in the US is measured before government taxes and transfers. After, the poverty rate has been in steady decline: Link... and just about everyone has seen a real increase in income: If you want to bask in the good ol' days, look to Japan.
lol seriously ?
Why not taking a graph about poverty since -400 before Jesus fucking Christ. Free market and globalization is a failure, only people who can't go out in the street and talk to actual people refuse to see that.
• Nationally, between 2000 and 2012, the percentage of people in poverty increased from 12.2 percent to 15.9 percent, while the number of people in poverty increased from 33.3 million to 48.8 million.
• Both the number and percentage of people in poverty increased in 44 states between 2000 and 2012.
• The percentage of people in the United States with income below 50 percent of the poverty thresholds grew from 5.0 percent in 2000 to 7.0 percent in 2012. Over this period, the percentage of people with income below 125 percent of the poverty thresholds grew from 16.5 percent to 20.8 percent.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr12-01.pdf
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On November 27 2013 03:13 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2013 02:47 Acrofales wrote:On November 27 2013 02:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 27 2013 02:10 Acrofales wrote:On November 27 2013 01:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 27 2013 01:35 Acrofales wrote:On November 27 2013 01:21 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 26 2013 21:14 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 19:17 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 14:47 stroggozzz wrote:
[quote]
I don't think we live in the most prosperous time. Real wages have stagnated over the last 35 years, working hours have gone up. Third world diseases that were eradicated are returning. More children are starving. there is also less democracy(labor unions have been destroyed) and a more atomized society. I'd also argue that western culture peaked in the enlightenment when science and philosophy was like pop culture today, but it has been on the decline ever since.
Also on your earlier point, i'd point out that our current system was called wage-slavery and was a mainstream position by american factory girls in the 19th century. There are also arguments by good writers/historians that note that slavery for black people never really ended until after WW2, as black life was criminalized after they were freed-leading to a life that had just as little freedom as slavery. Being poor has been criminalized again over the past 35 years under the neoliberal period with the war on drugs.
Language and political power has an amazing amount of delusion to it though. It sees itself as logical, objective and fair. It's oppression is paternalistic, as it sees its subjects as inferior, stupid people. When it's subjects call their oppression wage slavery, they will change the name to wage labor. When it's subjects call their journalism propaganda, they change its name to public relations. Minor fluctuations of wealth in last 30 years are not what my post was concerned with, even if I agreed with you that real wages are good sole measure of prosperity when comparing different periods. And obviously my post was concerning modern first world countries, I hoped I would not have to spell that in full. Since we were discussing political system in US/West I thought it was clear. As for amount of democracy if you find some measure of it that you can quantify and compare different periods please show me how it declined. Claiming that western culture peaked in the enlightenment is exactly the lack of knowledge of the past that I was talking about. Enlightenment was important period, but science and philosophy was not like pop culture today. It was enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy and most of the population was living in conditions none today experienced. The rest is a rant not related to my post, as I specifically said things are not all perfect today, so I will ignore it. I was talking only about America and the western countries that have undergone very similar political changes. When i was talking about third world diseases, the ones such as Rheumatic fever, that didn't used to exist in the west, now does exist-at least in New Zealand. poverty has risen everywhere, i believe in America its something like 50million people going to bed hungry. Your right that real wages is not 100% reliable. government social spending has also been repeatedly cut as well. Families with 1 adult on min wage used to be able to survive, but now they cant. not everyone is poorer though. CEO's managed to increase their salaries from 30x the average person to over 300x the average persons income. You might argue that only the wealthy could enjoy philosophy and science in the enlightenment, but a historian-Jonathan Rose, wrote a good scholarly account of how 19th century British working class was full of 'proletarian autodidacts with a passionate pursuit of knowledge'. Dickens, Tolstoy, ect was all very popular at the time. todays culture is mostly driven on profits and seduction. The fact that tv shows will only enter the production phase if they are able to gain viewers already dramatically narrows the spectrum of mainstream culture that we will see. i think image based mediums are just very seductive. For example Cicero noted that the Colosseum drew the plebs attention away from political affairs. Poverty in the US is measured before government taxes and transfers. After, the poverty rate has been in steady decline: Link... and just about everyone has seen a real increase in income: If you want to bask in the good ol' days, look to Japan. Is that adjusted for inflation? Otherwise poverty has actually gotten quite a bit worse. Both charts use inflation adjusted figures. Okay, just making sure. Not that I doubted that poverty has gotten less in the US throughout the 21st century... and not only that, but any other measure of quality of life people care to dream up will show an improvement too. But that's a kind of pointless measure. I think if you look at quality of life in most areas of Africa or South America, you'll find that it has actually gone down. Argentina was actually one of the richest countries in the world at the turn of the 20th century. Africa was a mess already, but at least it didn't have the problems of rampant overpopulation it has to deal with now (same for large parts of Asia). Yeah, Argentina's a mess. Health and income in most developing countries have been improving substantially though. Depends on what you measure. I expect poverty has gotten worse, because there are simply more people. However, the standard of living in general has improved vastly, because more and more areas have access to schools, clean drinking water and (very) basic medical care. That means health and education are significantly improved since the 19th century. People may still starve to death in ramshackle self-built huts in large parts of the world, but at least their babies live to starve to death at school, rather than dying from cholera at age 3. EDIT: I am assuming it is even possible to make a meaningful comparison of poverty between the vastly different ways of living in developing nations at the start of the 20th century and now. Large-scale urbanization for one has completely changed the way people live. From the World Bank: Show nested quote +Poverty Trends in the Developing World
At least 721 million fewer people live in extreme poverty in the world today than 30 years ago. Poverty reduction surpassed expectations—the Millennium Developing Goal 1 of halving extreme poverty between 1990 and 2015 was reached five years ahead of time. Linkprogress...
Yeah... but we were talking about turn of the 20th century to now, not 1990 to now. But I couldn't find any data. It's possible that the 70s-90s was a massive spike in poverty in the developing world that we are slowly fixing.
And when I say possible, it's not just a wild hypothesis. This is the time when urbanization there really got going, combined with the instability of the regimes there due to colonial powers pulling out (after 100-400 years of ruling).
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On November 27 2013 02:47 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2013 02:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 27 2013 02:10 Acrofales wrote:On November 27 2013 01:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 27 2013 01:35 Acrofales wrote:On November 27 2013 01:21 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 26 2013 21:14 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 19:17 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 14:47 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 14:06 mcc wrote:
[quote]
We live in times where you are more free and more prosperous than any other time in history in any reasonable objective measure you might choose. People claiming how bad things are compared to imaginary period in the past simply do not know the past. Things can be better and we should try to make them better, but saying there was point in a past where they were better is just either ignorance of that past or completely skewed perspective. I don't think we live in the most prosperous time. Real wages have stagnated over the last 35 years, working hours have gone up. Third world diseases that were eradicated are returning. More children are starving. there is also less democracy(labor unions have been destroyed) and a more atomized society. I'd also argue that western culture peaked in the enlightenment when science and philosophy was like pop culture today, but it has been on the decline ever since. Also on your earlier point, i'd point out that our current system was called wage-slavery and was a mainstream position by american factory girls in the 19th century. There are also arguments by good writers/historians that note that slavery for black people never really ended until after WW2, as black life was criminalized after they were freed-leading to a life that had just as little freedom as slavery. Being poor has been criminalized again over the past 35 years under the neoliberal period with the war on drugs. Language and political power has an amazing amount of delusion to it though. It sees itself as logical, objective and fair. It's oppression is paternalistic, as it sees its subjects as inferior, stupid people. When it's subjects call their oppression wage slavery, they will change the name to wage labor. When it's subjects call their journalism propaganda, they change its name to public relations. Minor fluctuations of wealth in last 30 years are not what my post was concerned with, even if I agreed with you that real wages are good sole measure of prosperity when comparing different periods. And obviously my post was concerning modern first world countries, I hoped I would not have to spell that in full. Since we were discussing political system in US/West I thought it was clear. As for amount of democracy if you find some measure of it that you can quantify and compare different periods please show me how it declined. Claiming that western culture peaked in the enlightenment is exactly the lack of knowledge of the past that I was talking about. Enlightenment was important period, but science and philosophy was not like pop culture today. It was enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy and most of the population was living in conditions none today experienced. The rest is a rant not related to my post, as I specifically said things are not all perfect today, so I will ignore it. I was talking only about America and the western countries that have undergone very similar political changes. When i was talking about third world diseases, the ones such as Rheumatic fever, that didn't used to exist in the west, now does exist-at least in New Zealand. poverty has risen everywhere, i believe in America its something like 50million people going to bed hungry. Your right that real wages is not 100% reliable. government social spending has also been repeatedly cut as well. Families with 1 adult on min wage used to be able to survive, but now they cant. not everyone is poorer though. CEO's managed to increase their salaries from 30x the average person to over 300x the average persons income. You might argue that only the wealthy could enjoy philosophy and science in the enlightenment, but a historian-Jonathan Rose, wrote a good scholarly account of how 19th century British working class was full of 'proletarian autodidacts with a passionate pursuit of knowledge'. Dickens, Tolstoy, ect was all very popular at the time. todays culture is mostly driven on profits and seduction. The fact that tv shows will only enter the production phase if they are able to gain viewers already dramatically narrows the spectrum of mainstream culture that we will see. i think image based mediums are just very seductive. For example Cicero noted that the Colosseum drew the plebs attention away from political affairs. Poverty in the US is measured before government taxes and transfers. After, the poverty rate has been in steady decline: Link... and just about everyone has seen a real increase in income: If you want to bask in the good ol' days, look to Japan. Is that adjusted for inflation? Otherwise poverty has actually gotten quite a bit worse. Both charts use inflation adjusted figures. Okay, just making sure. Not that I doubted that poverty has gotten less in the US throughout the 21st century... and not only that, but any other measure of quality of life people care to dream up will show an improvement too. But that's a kind of pointless measure. I think if you look at quality of life in most areas of Africa or South America, you'll find that it has actually gone down. Argentina was actually one of the richest countries in the world at the turn of the 20th century. Africa was a mess already, but at least it didn't have the problems of rampant overpopulation it has to deal with now (same for large parts of Asia). Yeah, Argentina's a mess. Health and income in most developing countries have been improving substantially though. Depends on what you measure. I expect poverty has gotten worse, because there are simply more people. However, the standard of living in general has improved vastly, because more and more areas have access to schools, clean drinking water and (very) basic medical care. That means health and education are significantly improved since the 19th century. People may still starve to death in ramshackle self-built huts in large parts of the world, but at least their babies live to starve to death at school, rather than dying from cholera at age 3. EDIT: I am assuming it is even possible to make a meaningful comparison of poverty between the vastly different ways of living in developing nations at the start of the 20th century and now. Large-scale urbanization for one has completely changed the way people live.
Actually from various readings over the last few years I got the impression that even poverty is shrinking nearly universally, the population increase does not necessarily mean increase in poverty otherwise rich countries would not be rich in the first place.
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On November 27 2013 03:18 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2013 03:13 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 27 2013 02:47 Acrofales wrote:On November 27 2013 02:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 27 2013 02:10 Acrofales wrote:On November 27 2013 01:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 27 2013 01:35 Acrofales wrote:On November 27 2013 01:21 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 26 2013 21:14 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 19:17 mcc wrote:
[quote]
Minor fluctuations of wealth in last 30 years are not what my post was concerned with, even if I agreed with you that real wages are good sole measure of prosperity when comparing different periods. And obviously my post was concerning modern first world countries, I hoped I would not have to spell that in full. Since we were discussing political system in US/West I thought it was clear. As for amount of democracy if you find some measure of it that you can quantify and compare different periods please show me how it declined.
Claiming that western culture peaked in the enlightenment is exactly the lack of knowledge of the past that I was talking about. Enlightenment was important period, but science and philosophy was not like pop culture today. It was enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy and most of the population was living in conditions none today experienced.
The rest is a rant not related to my post, as I specifically said things are not all perfect today, so I will ignore it. I was talking only about America and the western countries that have undergone very similar political changes. When i was talking about third world diseases, the ones such as Rheumatic fever, that didn't used to exist in the west, now does exist-at least in New Zealand. poverty has risen everywhere, i believe in America its something like 50million people going to bed hungry. Your right that real wages is not 100% reliable. government social spending has also been repeatedly cut as well. Families with 1 adult on min wage used to be able to survive, but now they cant. not everyone is poorer though. CEO's managed to increase their salaries from 30x the average person to over 300x the average persons income. You might argue that only the wealthy could enjoy philosophy and science in the enlightenment, but a historian-Jonathan Rose, wrote a good scholarly account of how 19th century British working class was full of 'proletarian autodidacts with a passionate pursuit of knowledge'. Dickens, Tolstoy, ect was all very popular at the time. todays culture is mostly driven on profits and seduction. The fact that tv shows will only enter the production phase if they are able to gain viewers already dramatically narrows the spectrum of mainstream culture that we will see. i think image based mediums are just very seductive. For example Cicero noted that the Colosseum drew the plebs attention away from political affairs. Poverty in the US is measured before government taxes and transfers. After, the poverty rate has been in steady decline: Link... and just about everyone has seen a real increase in income: If you want to bask in the good ol' days, look to Japan. Is that adjusted for inflation? Otherwise poverty has actually gotten quite a bit worse. Both charts use inflation adjusted figures. Okay, just making sure. Not that I doubted that poverty has gotten less in the US throughout the 21st century... and not only that, but any other measure of quality of life people care to dream up will show an improvement too. But that's a kind of pointless measure. I think if you look at quality of life in most areas of Africa or South America, you'll find that it has actually gone down. Argentina was actually one of the richest countries in the world at the turn of the 20th century. Africa was a mess already, but at least it didn't have the problems of rampant overpopulation it has to deal with now (same for large parts of Asia). Yeah, Argentina's a mess. Health and income in most developing countries have been improving substantially though. Depends on what you measure. I expect poverty has gotten worse, because there are simply more people. However, the standard of living in general has improved vastly, because more and more areas have access to schools, clean drinking water and (very) basic medical care. That means health and education are significantly improved since the 19th century. People may still starve to death in ramshackle self-built huts in large parts of the world, but at least their babies live to starve to death at school, rather than dying from cholera at age 3. EDIT: I am assuming it is even possible to make a meaningful comparison of poverty between the vastly different ways of living in developing nations at the start of the 20th century and now. Large-scale urbanization for one has completely changed the way people live. From the World Bank: Poverty Trends in the Developing World
At least 721 million fewer people live in extreme poverty in the world today than 30 years ago. Poverty reduction surpassed expectations—the Millennium Developing Goal 1 of halving extreme poverty between 1990 and 2015 was reached five years ahead of time. Linkprogress... Yeah... but we were talking about turn of the 20th century to now, not 1990 to now. But I couldn't find any data. It's possible that the 70s-90s was a massive spike in poverty in the developing world that we are slowly fixing. And when I say possible, it's not just a wild hypothesis. This is the time when urbanization there really got going, combined with the instability of the regimes there due to colonial powers pulling out (after 100-400 years of ruling).
No globally poverty was decreasing after WW2 for obvious reasons. The innovations permitted economical gain almost on the entire globe, altho it was only possible with increasing inequalities (between countries) and an overconsumption of natural goods.
Inequalities are rising now because we are at the end of a cycle. Since the energy crisis, the economy is hanging thanks to quick fix and debt, this is coming to an end. The rising inequalities and poverty of today are the result of the behaviour of yesterday.
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On November 27 2013 03:18 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2013 03:13 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 27 2013 02:47 Acrofales wrote:On November 27 2013 02:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 27 2013 02:10 Acrofales wrote:On November 27 2013 01:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 27 2013 01:35 Acrofales wrote:On November 27 2013 01:21 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 26 2013 21:14 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 19:17 mcc wrote:
[quote]
Minor fluctuations of wealth in last 30 years are not what my post was concerned with, even if I agreed with you that real wages are good sole measure of prosperity when comparing different periods. And obviously my post was concerning modern first world countries, I hoped I would not have to spell that in full. Since we were discussing political system in US/West I thought it was clear. As for amount of democracy if you find some measure of it that you can quantify and compare different periods please show me how it declined.
Claiming that western culture peaked in the enlightenment is exactly the lack of knowledge of the past that I was talking about. Enlightenment was important period, but science and philosophy was not like pop culture today. It was enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy and most of the population was living in conditions none today experienced.
The rest is a rant not related to my post, as I specifically said things are not all perfect today, so I will ignore it. I was talking only about America and the western countries that have undergone very similar political changes. When i was talking about third world diseases, the ones such as Rheumatic fever, that didn't used to exist in the west, now does exist-at least in New Zealand. poverty has risen everywhere, i believe in America its something like 50million people going to bed hungry. Your right that real wages is not 100% reliable. government social spending has also been repeatedly cut as well. Families with 1 adult on min wage used to be able to survive, but now they cant. not everyone is poorer though. CEO's managed to increase their salaries from 30x the average person to over 300x the average persons income. You might argue that only the wealthy could enjoy philosophy and science in the enlightenment, but a historian-Jonathan Rose, wrote a good scholarly account of how 19th century British working class was full of 'proletarian autodidacts with a passionate pursuit of knowledge'. Dickens, Tolstoy, ect was all very popular at the time. todays culture is mostly driven on profits and seduction. The fact that tv shows will only enter the production phase if they are able to gain viewers already dramatically narrows the spectrum of mainstream culture that we will see. i think image based mediums are just very seductive. For example Cicero noted that the Colosseum drew the plebs attention away from political affairs. Poverty in the US is measured before government taxes and transfers. After, the poverty rate has been in steady decline: Link... and just about everyone has seen a real increase in income: If you want to bask in the good ol' days, look to Japan. Is that adjusted for inflation? Otherwise poverty has actually gotten quite a bit worse. Both charts use inflation adjusted figures. Okay, just making sure. Not that I doubted that poverty has gotten less in the US throughout the 21st century... and not only that, but any other measure of quality of life people care to dream up will show an improvement too. But that's a kind of pointless measure. I think if you look at quality of life in most areas of Africa or South America, you'll find that it has actually gone down. Argentina was actually one of the richest countries in the world at the turn of the 20th century. Africa was a mess already, but at least it didn't have the problems of rampant overpopulation it has to deal with now (same for large parts of Asia). Yeah, Argentina's a mess. Health and income in most developing countries have been improving substantially though. Depends on what you measure. I expect poverty has gotten worse, because there are simply more people. However, the standard of living in general has improved vastly, because more and more areas have access to schools, clean drinking water and (very) basic medical care. That means health and education are significantly improved since the 19th century. People may still starve to death in ramshackle self-built huts in large parts of the world, but at least their babies live to starve to death at school, rather than dying from cholera at age 3. EDIT: I am assuming it is even possible to make a meaningful comparison of poverty between the vastly different ways of living in developing nations at the start of the 20th century and now. Large-scale urbanization for one has completely changed the way people live. From the World Bank: Poverty Trends in the Developing World
At least 721 million fewer people live in extreme poverty in the world today than 30 years ago. Poverty reduction surpassed expectations—the Millennium Developing Goal 1 of halving extreme poverty between 1990 and 2015 was reached five years ahead of time. Linkprogress... Yeah... but we were talking about turn of the 20th century to now, not 1990 to now. But I couldn't find any data. It's possible that the 70s-90s was a massive spike in poverty in the developing world that we are slowly fixing. And when I say possible, it's not just a wild hypothesis. This is the time when urbanization there really got going, combined with the instability of the regimes there due to colonial powers pulling out (after 100-400 years of ruling).
Poverty 100 years ago was much worse than it is today. There was actual poverty in all countries of the world, whereas today you basically have large number of countries where hunger, lack of roof, lack of healthcare are not something you encounter at all. And even developing countries were much worse off. I would expect a graph of poverty levels to be steady decrease over the century, with some humps caused by world wars and violent revolutions.
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On November 27 2013 03:15 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2013 01:21 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 26 2013 21:14 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 19:17 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 14:47 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 14:06 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 12:45 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 11:39 Tula wrote:
[quote]
And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously.
Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page.
Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it.
Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound.
[quote]
Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum).
Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter. Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses. We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. We live in times where you are more free and more prosperous than any other time in history in any reasonable objective measure you might choose. People claiming how bad things are compared to imaginary period in the past simply do not know the past. Things can be better and we should try to make them better, but saying there was point in a past where they were better is just either ignorance of that past or completely skewed perspective. I don't think we live in the most prosperous time. Real wages have stagnated over the last 35 years, working hours have gone up. Third world diseases that were eradicated are returning. More children are starving. there is also less democracy(labor unions have been destroyed) and a more atomized society. I'd also argue that western culture peaked in the enlightenment when science and philosophy was like pop culture today, but it has been on the decline ever since. Also on your earlier point, i'd point out that our current system was called wage-slavery and was a mainstream position by american factory girls in the 19th century. There are also arguments by good writers/historians that note that slavery for black people never really ended until after WW2, as black life was criminalized after they were freed-leading to a life that had just as little freedom as slavery. Being poor has been criminalized again over the past 35 years under the neoliberal period with the war on drugs. Language and political power has an amazing amount of delusion to it though. It sees itself as logical, objective and fair. It's oppression is paternalistic, as it sees its subjects as inferior, stupid people. When it's subjects call their oppression wage slavery, they will change the name to wage labor. When it's subjects call their journalism propaganda, they change its name to public relations. Minor fluctuations of wealth in last 30 years are not what my post was concerned with, even if I agreed with you that real wages are good sole measure of prosperity when comparing different periods. And obviously my post was concerning modern first world countries, I hoped I would not have to spell that in full. Since we were discussing political system in US/West I thought it was clear. As for amount of democracy if you find some measure of it that you can quantify and compare different periods please show me how it declined. Claiming that western culture peaked in the enlightenment is exactly the lack of knowledge of the past that I was talking about. Enlightenment was important period, but science and philosophy was not like pop culture today. It was enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy and most of the population was living in conditions none today experienced. The rest is a rant not related to my post, as I specifically said things are not all perfect today, so I will ignore it. I was talking only about America and the western countries that have undergone very similar political changes. When i was talking about third world diseases, the ones such as Rheumatic fever, that didn't used to exist in the west, now does exist-at least in New Zealand. poverty has risen everywhere, i believe in America its something like 50million people going to bed hungry. Your right that real wages is not 100% reliable. government social spending has also been repeatedly cut as well. Families with 1 adult on min wage used to be able to survive, but now they cant. not everyone is poorer though. CEO's managed to increase their salaries from 30x the average person to over 300x the average persons income. You might argue that only the wealthy could enjoy philosophy and science in the enlightenment, but a historian-Jonathan Rose, wrote a good scholarly account of how 19th century British working class was full of 'proletarian autodidacts with a passionate pursuit of knowledge'. Dickens, Tolstoy, ect was all very popular at the time. todays culture is mostly driven on profits and seduction. The fact that tv shows will only enter the production phase if they are able to gain viewers already dramatically narrows the spectrum of mainstream culture that we will see. i think image based mediums are just very seductive. For example Cicero noted that the Colosseum drew the plebs attention away from political affairs. Poverty in the US is measured before government taxes and transfers. After, the poverty rate has been in steady decline: Link... and just about everyone has seen a real increase in income: If you want to bask in the good ol' days, look to Japan. lol seriously ? Why not taking a graph about poverty since -400 before Jesus fucking Christ. Free market and globalization is a failure, only people who can't go out in the street and talk to actual people refuse to see that. Show nested quote +• Nationally, between 2000 and 2012, the percentage of people in poverty increased from 12.2 percent to 15.9 percent, while the number of people in poverty increased from 33.3 million to 48.8 million.
• Both the number and percentage of people in poverty increased in 44 states between 2000 and 2012.
• The percentage of people in the United States with income below 50 percent of the poverty thresholds grew from 5.0 percent in 2000 to 7.0 percent in 2012. Over this period, the percentage of people with income below 125 percent of the poverty thresholds grew from 16.5 percent to 20.8 percent. http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr12-01.pdf
The period from 1979 to today is in line with the discussion. stroggozzz cited real wages over the past 35 years and proposed that the enlightenment was the peak of western civ.
As for your quote, census figures quote poverty rate before government taxes and transfers. As I already pointed out. You're also focused on the roughest patch of US economic history since WW2. We spent a lot on wars and had a big recession, if you hadn't noticed.
Who is globalization "bad" for? White people in rich world countries? Is that really all that matters?
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On November 27 2013 03:18 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2013 03:13 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 27 2013 02:47 Acrofales wrote:On November 27 2013 02:25 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 27 2013 02:10 Acrofales wrote:On November 27 2013 01:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 27 2013 01:35 Acrofales wrote:On November 27 2013 01:21 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 26 2013 21:14 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 19:17 mcc wrote:
[quote]
Minor fluctuations of wealth in last 30 years are not what my post was concerned with, even if I agreed with you that real wages are good sole measure of prosperity when comparing different periods. And obviously my post was concerning modern first world countries, I hoped I would not have to spell that in full. Since we were discussing political system in US/West I thought it was clear. As for amount of democracy if you find some measure of it that you can quantify and compare different periods please show me how it declined.
Claiming that western culture peaked in the enlightenment is exactly the lack of knowledge of the past that I was talking about. Enlightenment was important period, but science and philosophy was not like pop culture today. It was enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy and most of the population was living in conditions none today experienced.
The rest is a rant not related to my post, as I specifically said things are not all perfect today, so I will ignore it. I was talking only about America and the western countries that have undergone very similar political changes. When i was talking about third world diseases, the ones such as Rheumatic fever, that didn't used to exist in the west, now does exist-at least in New Zealand. poverty has risen everywhere, i believe in America its something like 50million people going to bed hungry. Your right that real wages is not 100% reliable. government social spending has also been repeatedly cut as well. Families with 1 adult on min wage used to be able to survive, but now they cant. not everyone is poorer though. CEO's managed to increase their salaries from 30x the average person to over 300x the average persons income. You might argue that only the wealthy could enjoy philosophy and science in the enlightenment, but a historian-Jonathan Rose, wrote a good scholarly account of how 19th century British working class was full of 'proletarian autodidacts with a passionate pursuit of knowledge'. Dickens, Tolstoy, ect was all very popular at the time. todays culture is mostly driven on profits and seduction. The fact that tv shows will only enter the production phase if they are able to gain viewers already dramatically narrows the spectrum of mainstream culture that we will see. i think image based mediums are just very seductive. For example Cicero noted that the Colosseum drew the plebs attention away from political affairs. Poverty in the US is measured before government taxes and transfers. After, the poverty rate has been in steady decline: Link... and just about everyone has seen a real increase in income: If you want to bask in the good ol' days, look to Japan. Is that adjusted for inflation? Otherwise poverty has actually gotten quite a bit worse. Both charts use inflation adjusted figures. Okay, just making sure. Not that I doubted that poverty has gotten less in the US throughout the 21st century... and not only that, but any other measure of quality of life people care to dream up will show an improvement too. But that's a kind of pointless measure. I think if you look at quality of life in most areas of Africa or South America, you'll find that it has actually gone down. Argentina was actually one of the richest countries in the world at the turn of the 20th century. Africa was a mess already, but at least it didn't have the problems of rampant overpopulation it has to deal with now (same for large parts of Asia). Yeah, Argentina's a mess. Health and income in most developing countries have been improving substantially though. Depends on what you measure. I expect poverty has gotten worse, because there are simply more people. However, the standard of living in general has improved vastly, because more and more areas have access to schools, clean drinking water and (very) basic medical care. That means health and education are significantly improved since the 19th century. People may still starve to death in ramshackle self-built huts in large parts of the world, but at least their babies live to starve to death at school, rather than dying from cholera at age 3. EDIT: I am assuming it is even possible to make a meaningful comparison of poverty between the vastly different ways of living in developing nations at the start of the 20th century and now. Large-scale urbanization for one has completely changed the way people live. From the World Bank: Poverty Trends in the Developing World
At least 721 million fewer people live in extreme poverty in the world today than 30 years ago. Poverty reduction surpassed expectations—the Millennium Developing Goal 1 of halving extreme poverty between 1990 and 2015 was reached five years ahead of time. Linkprogress... Yeah... but we were talking about turn of the 20th century to now, not 1990 to now. But I couldn't find any data. It's possible that the 70s-90s was a massive spike in poverty in the developing world that we are slowly fixing. And when I say possible, it's not just a wild hypothesis. This is the time when urbanization there really got going, combined with the instability of the regimes there due to colonial powers pulling out (after 100-400 years of ruling).
Gapminder.org
lots of data. Hans also has a new documentary out 
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On November 26 2013 23:55 mcc wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 21:14 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 19:17 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 14:47 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 14:06 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 12:45 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 11:39 Tula wrote:On November 26 2013 10:06 KwarK wrote:
I'm gonna stick with my "Nazis were shitty people" theory if it's all the same to you Moltke. And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously. Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page. Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it. Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound. On November 26 2013 10:10 IgnE wrote:
The world is the will to power. Legal conditions are simply anemic restrictions on the will of life, and are therefore subordinate to its goals. As Nietzsche would say:
A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness. Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum). Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter. Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses. We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. We live in times where you are more free and more prosperous than any other time in history in any reasonable objective measure you might choose. People claiming how bad things are compared to imaginary period in the past simply do not know the past. Things can be better and we should try to make them better, but saying there was point in a past where they were better is just either ignorance of that past or completely skewed perspective. I don't think we live in the most prosperous time. Real wages have stagnated over the last 35 years, working hours have gone up. Third world diseases that were eradicated are returning. More children are starving. there is also less democracy(labor unions have been destroyed) and a more atomized society. I'd also argue that western culture peaked in the enlightenment when science and philosophy was like pop culture today, but it has been on the decline ever since. Also on your earlier point, i'd point out that our current system was called wage-slavery and was a mainstream position by american factory girls in the 19th century. There are also arguments by good writers/historians that note that slavery for black people never really ended until after WW2, as black life was criminalized after they were freed-leading to a life that had just as little freedom as slavery. Being poor has been criminalized again over the past 35 years under the neoliberal period with the war on drugs. Language and political power has an amazing amount of delusion to it though. It sees itself as logical, objective and fair. It's oppression is paternalistic, as it sees its subjects as inferior, stupid people. When it's subjects call their oppression wage slavery, they will change the name to wage labor. When it's subjects call their journalism propaganda, they change its name to public relations. Minor fluctuations of wealth in last 30 years are not what my post was concerned with, even if I agreed with you that real wages are good sole measure of prosperity when comparing different periods. And obviously my post was concerning modern first world countries, I hoped I would not have to spell that in full. Since we were discussing political system in US/West I thought it was clear. As for amount of democracy if you find some measure of it that you can quantify and compare different periods please show me how it declined. Claiming that western culture peaked in the enlightenment is exactly the lack of knowledge of the past that I was talking about. Enlightenment was important period, but science and philosophy was not like pop culture today. It was enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy and most of the population was living in conditions none today experienced. The rest is a rant not related to my post, as I specifically said things are not all perfect today, so I will ignore it. I was talking only about America and the western countries that have undergone very similar political changes. When i was talking about third world diseases, the ones such as Rheumatic fever, that didn't used to exist in the west, now does exist-at least in New Zealand. poverty has risen everywhere, i believe in America its something like 50million people going to bed hungry. Your right that real wages is not 100% reliable. government social spending has also been repeatedly cut as well. Families with 1 adult on min wage used to be able to survive, but now they cant. not everyone is poorer though. CEO's managed to increase their salaries from 30x the average person to over 300x the average persons income. You might argue that only the wealthy could enjoy philosophy and science in the enlightenment, but a historian-Jonathan Rose, wrote a good scholarly account of how 19th century British working class was full of 'proletarian autodidacts with a passionate pursuit of knowledge'. Dickens, Tolstoy, ect was all very popular at the time. todays culture is mostly driven on profits and seduction. The fact that tv shows will only enter the production phase if they are able to gain viewers already dramatically narrows the spectrum of mainstream culture that we will see. i think image based mediums are just very seductive. For example Cicero noted that the Colosseum drew the plebs attention away from political affairs. New diseases appear, question is are we living longer and healthier ? Longer definitely, most likely also healthier. Every trend points to it except our lack of exercise and too much food. But lack of exercise and obesity are results of this unprecedented freedom and prosperity we have and that is what I claimed. Standard of poverty has also risen. Today's poor live in luxury compared to poor in 19th century. Of course some things are missing, especially in US, like universal public healthcare system, reasonably priced or "free" education, better safety net, but even lacking those people are still better off than they were in the not-so-recent past. And as far as freedoms go, there is no comparison with any point in time in the past at all. EDIT: as for the 19th century culture, it is telling that even though not completely bad, a lot of people could not even read, there is absolutely no comparison today. And popular culture at that time was the same, driven by "profit and seduction" as you call it, you just see it differently from your vantage point in the present, because of course most of that crap did not survive, but it does not mean it was not there. What survives a time period culturally is not necessarily good representation of popular culture of the time.
![[image loading]](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2013/11/oecd2.png)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/21/the-u-s-ranks-26th-for-life-expectancy-right-behind-slovenia/
There is a huge gap in the life expectancy between the rich and the poor. The number one predictor of obesity in the United States is income. Saying something like "obesity is a result of lack of exercise and unprecedented freedom and prosperity" is just dead wrong. Obesity is highly correlated with poverty, and is a product of an agricultural and food industry that maximizes profits rather than health, and starts with the decision to grow massive monocultures of corn, grown with oil-based products, and turned into processed sugars for sale at the lowest possible price to those who can't afford any better. No one is disputing that life expectancy and healthcare is better now than it was in Enlightenment Europe where the poor, prostitutes, and other oddballs were thrown in asylums and doctors were still talking about yellow bile and black bile. But it's absurd to blame "unprecedented freedoms" for the distasteful side effects of the current system.
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You forgot to mention the US's obsession with palliative care as opposed to preventative care made only worse by our healthcare infrastructure, Igne. Tsk tsk.
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That's what the graph is for farv.
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On November 27 2013 04:59 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 23:55 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 21:14 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 19:17 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 14:47 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 14:06 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 12:45 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 11:39 Tula wrote:
[quote]
And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously.
Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page.
Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it.
Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound.
[quote]
Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum).
Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter. Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses. We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. We live in times where you are more free and more prosperous than any other time in history in any reasonable objective measure you might choose. People claiming how bad things are compared to imaginary period in the past simply do not know the past. Things can be better and we should try to make them better, but saying there was point in a past where they were better is just either ignorance of that past or completely skewed perspective. I don't think we live in the most prosperous time. Real wages have stagnated over the last 35 years, working hours have gone up. Third world diseases that were eradicated are returning. More children are starving. there is also less democracy(labor unions have been destroyed) and a more atomized society. I'd also argue that western culture peaked in the enlightenment when science and philosophy was like pop culture today, but it has been on the decline ever since. Also on your earlier point, i'd point out that our current system was called wage-slavery and was a mainstream position by american factory girls in the 19th century. There are also arguments by good writers/historians that note that slavery for black people never really ended until after WW2, as black life was criminalized after they were freed-leading to a life that had just as little freedom as slavery. Being poor has been criminalized again over the past 35 years under the neoliberal period with the war on drugs. Language and political power has an amazing amount of delusion to it though. It sees itself as logical, objective and fair. It's oppression is paternalistic, as it sees its subjects as inferior, stupid people. When it's subjects call their oppression wage slavery, they will change the name to wage labor. When it's subjects call their journalism propaganda, they change its name to public relations. Minor fluctuations of wealth in last 30 years are not what my post was concerned with, even if I agreed with you that real wages are good sole measure of prosperity when comparing different periods. And obviously my post was concerning modern first world countries, I hoped I would not have to spell that in full. Since we were discussing political system in US/West I thought it was clear. As for amount of democracy if you find some measure of it that you can quantify and compare different periods please show me how it declined. Claiming that western culture peaked in the enlightenment is exactly the lack of knowledge of the past that I was talking about. Enlightenment was important period, but science and philosophy was not like pop culture today. It was enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy and most of the population was living in conditions none today experienced. The rest is a rant not related to my post, as I specifically said things are not all perfect today, so I will ignore it. I was talking only about America and the western countries that have undergone very similar political changes. When i was talking about third world diseases, the ones such as Rheumatic fever, that didn't used to exist in the west, now does exist-at least in New Zealand. poverty has risen everywhere, i believe in America its something like 50million people going to bed hungry. Your right that real wages is not 100% reliable. government social spending has also been repeatedly cut as well. Families with 1 adult on min wage used to be able to survive, but now they cant. not everyone is poorer though. CEO's managed to increase their salaries from 30x the average person to over 300x the average persons income. You might argue that only the wealthy could enjoy philosophy and science in the enlightenment, but a historian-Jonathan Rose, wrote a good scholarly account of how 19th century British working class was full of 'proletarian autodidacts with a passionate pursuit of knowledge'. Dickens, Tolstoy, ect was all very popular at the time. todays culture is mostly driven on profits and seduction. The fact that tv shows will only enter the production phase if they are able to gain viewers already dramatically narrows the spectrum of mainstream culture that we will see. i think image based mediums are just very seductive. For example Cicero noted that the Colosseum drew the plebs attention away from political affairs. New diseases appear, question is are we living longer and healthier ? Longer definitely, most likely also healthier. Every trend points to it except our lack of exercise and too much food. But lack of exercise and obesity are results of this unprecedented freedom and prosperity we have and that is what I claimed. Standard of poverty has also risen. Today's poor live in luxury compared to poor in 19th century. Of course some things are missing, especially in US, like universal public healthcare system, reasonably priced or "free" education, better safety net, but even lacking those people are still better off than they were in the not-so-recent past. And as far as freedoms go, there is no comparison with any point in time in the past at all. EDIT: as for the 19th century culture, it is telling that even though not completely bad, a lot of people could not even read, there is absolutely no comparison today. And popular culture at that time was the same, driven by "profit and seduction" as you call it, you just see it differently from your vantage point in the present, because of course most of that crap did not survive, but it does not mean it was not there. What survives a time period culturally is not necessarily good representation of popular culture of the time. + Show Spoiler +http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/21/the-u-s-ranks-26th-for-life-expectancy-right-behind-slovenia/There is a huge gap in the life expectancy between the rich and the poor. The number one predictor of obesity in the United States is income. Saying something like "obesity is a result of lack of exercise and unprecedented freedom and prosperity" is just dead wrong. Obesity is highly correlated with poverty, and is a product of an agricultural and food industry that maximizes profits rather than health, and starts with the decision to grow massive monocultures of corn, grown with oil-based products, and turned into processed sugars for sale at the lowest possible price to those who can't afford any better. No one is disputing that life expectancy and healthcare is better now than it was in Enlightenment Europe where the poor, prostitutes, and other oddballs were thrown in asylums and doctors were still talking about yellow bile and black bile. But it's absurd to blame "unprecedented freedoms" for the distasteful side effects of the current system.
You both have a point. Food companies aren't out there to make you as healthy as possible, but that's in part because of preferences for unhealthy food. Poverty used to mean not getting enough calories, now its about managing the number of calories you eat along with the satisfaction of a full stomach and yummy food.
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What about overeating as a symptom of the boredom of the isolated individual in modern society? Addictions and unhealthy habits have a tendency of forming in an existential vacuum, and that may or may not be exacerbated by a condition where basic material needs have been saturated.
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In terms of public policy, attempting to alleviate some of the conditions that feed into the malnourishment of the poor is far more practical than addressing the creeping ennui that plagues contemporary, wired, atomized society.
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In other words, it is far more practical for us, who hold no power over public policy, "to address the creeping ennui that plagues contemporary, wired, atomized society" over which we do exercise some leverage and responsibility. TL.net has been whining about politics for 10 years, yet we're still spitting out the same talking points as 10 years ago. The pragmatic pretensions of this forum is itself a facade for a kind of addition: I hope it is keeping you all from getting fat.
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United States43280 Posts
On November 27 2013 05:20 MoltkeWarding wrote:
What about overeating as a symptom of the boredom of the isolated individual in modern society? Addictions and unhealthy habits have a tendency of forming in an existential vacuum, and that may or may not be exacerbated by a condition where basic material needs have been saturated.
Never have individuals been more connected to one another, nor had so much to engage their interest. Your idealisation of the past has no basis in reality.
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On November 27 2013 05:27 MoltkeWarding wrote:
In other words, it is far more practical for us, who hold no power over public policy, "to address the creeping ennui that plagues contemporary, wired, atomized society" over which we do exercise some leverage and responsibility. TL.net has been whining about politics for 10 years, yet we're still spitting out the same talking points as 10 years ago. The pragmatic pretensions of this forum is itself a facade for a kind of addition: I hope it is keeping you all from getting fat.
If words were food, your posts have already brought me dangerously close to daily caloric intake. If you don't see the use in having forum discussions or enjoy smugly pointing out smug, then you should probably attempt to put that burdensome syntax to use in something more productive. All of a life is a facade, life's a garden, dig it, etc.
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On November 27 2013 04:59 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 23:55 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 21:14 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 19:17 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 14:47 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 14:06 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 12:45 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 11:39 Tula wrote:
[quote]
And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously.
Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page.
Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it.
Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound.
[quote]
Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum).
Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter. Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses. We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. We live in times where you are more free and more prosperous than any other time in history in any reasonable objective measure you might choose. People claiming how bad things are compared to imaginary period in the past simply do not know the past. Things can be better and we should try to make them better, but saying there was point in a past where they were better is just either ignorance of that past or completely skewed perspective. I don't think we live in the most prosperous time. Real wages have stagnated over the last 35 years, working hours have gone up. Third world diseases that were eradicated are returning. More children are starving. there is also less democracy(labor unions have been destroyed) and a more atomized society. I'd also argue that western culture peaked in the enlightenment when science and philosophy was like pop culture today, but it has been on the decline ever since. Also on your earlier point, i'd point out that our current system was called wage-slavery and was a mainstream position by american factory girls in the 19th century. There are also arguments by good writers/historians that note that slavery for black people never really ended until after WW2, as black life was criminalized after they were freed-leading to a life that had just as little freedom as slavery. Being poor has been criminalized again over the past 35 years under the neoliberal period with the war on drugs. Language and political power has an amazing amount of delusion to it though. It sees itself as logical, objective and fair. It's oppression is paternalistic, as it sees its subjects as inferior, stupid people. When it's subjects call their oppression wage slavery, they will change the name to wage labor. When it's subjects call their journalism propaganda, they change its name to public relations. Minor fluctuations of wealth in last 30 years are not what my post was concerned with, even if I agreed with you that real wages are good sole measure of prosperity when comparing different periods. And obviously my post was concerning modern first world countries, I hoped I would not have to spell that in full. Since we were discussing political system in US/West I thought it was clear. As for amount of democracy if you find some measure of it that you can quantify and compare different periods please show me how it declined. Claiming that western culture peaked in the enlightenment is exactly the lack of knowledge of the past that I was talking about. Enlightenment was important period, but science and philosophy was not like pop culture today. It was enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy and most of the population was living in conditions none today experienced. The rest is a rant not related to my post, as I specifically said things are not all perfect today, so I will ignore it. I was talking only about America and the western countries that have undergone very similar political changes. When i was talking about third world diseases, the ones such as Rheumatic fever, that didn't used to exist in the west, now does exist-at least in New Zealand. poverty has risen everywhere, i believe in America its something like 50million people going to bed hungry. Your right that real wages is not 100% reliable. government social spending has also been repeatedly cut as well. Families with 1 adult on min wage used to be able to survive, but now they cant. not everyone is poorer though. CEO's managed to increase their salaries from 30x the average person to over 300x the average persons income. You might argue that only the wealthy could enjoy philosophy and science in the enlightenment, but a historian-Jonathan Rose, wrote a good scholarly account of how 19th century British working class was full of 'proletarian autodidacts with a passionate pursuit of knowledge'. Dickens, Tolstoy, ect was all very popular at the time. todays culture is mostly driven on profits and seduction. The fact that tv shows will only enter the production phase if they are able to gain viewers already dramatically narrows the spectrum of mainstream culture that we will see. i think image based mediums are just very seductive. For example Cicero noted that the Colosseum drew the plebs attention away from political affairs. New diseases appear, question is are we living longer and healthier ? Longer definitely, most likely also healthier. Every trend points to it except our lack of exercise and too much food. But lack of exercise and obesity are results of this unprecedented freedom and prosperity we have and that is what I claimed. Standard of poverty has also risen. Today's poor live in luxury compared to poor in 19th century. Of course some things are missing, especially in US, like universal public healthcare system, reasonably priced or "free" education, better safety net, but even lacking those people are still better off than they were in the not-so-recent past. And as far as freedoms go, there is no comparison with any point in time in the past at all. EDIT: as for the 19th century culture, it is telling that even though not completely bad, a lot of people could not even read, there is absolutely no comparison today. And popular culture at that time was the same, driven by "profit and seduction" as you call it, you just see it differently from your vantage point in the present, because of course most of that crap did not survive, but it does not mean it was not there. What survives a time period culturally is not necessarily good representation of popular culture of the time. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/21/the-u-s-ranks-26th-for-life-expectancy-right-behind-slovenia/There is a huge gap in the life expectancy between the rich and the poor. The number one predictor of obesity in the United States is income. Saying something like "obesity is a result of lack of exercise and unprecedented freedom and prosperity" is just dead wrong. Obesity is highly correlated with poverty, and is a product of an agricultural and food industry that maximizes profits rather than health, and starts with the decision to grow massive monocultures of corn, grown with oil-based products, and turned into processed sugars for sale at the lowest possible price to those who can't afford any better. No one is disputing that life expectancy and healthcare is better now than it was in Enlightenment Europe where the poor, prostitutes, and other oddballs were thrown in asylums and doctors were still talking about yellow bile and black bile. But it's absurd to blame "unprecedented freedoms" for the distasteful side effects of the current system.
Poor in US and even more in Europe fall under the category of prosperous in the argument I am making. I know that low income families are the ones eating shittiest food and having least exercise. But they are still prosperous compared to anything but the highest classes of previous centuries. They do not suffer from hunger and actually have more food than they need, leading to obesity. The freedoms that I meant that lead to the lack of exercise are not the ones from political proclamations. I meant the tangible freedoms that modern society affords us (apart from the political ones), like freedom of free time, that we have much more today than previous generations (there are exceptions), freedom from hard manual labor, and so on. Those allow us to avoid involuntary exercise and that is what I meant. Voluntary exercise is not enough to offset it.
Of course there are problems like shittier food, if you are not careful and similar stuff. But they do not tip the balance enough to proclaim that there was time in the past where we were more prosperous and more free.
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