This is how society dies

[Guest]

This piece summarizes what I fear most: that our failure to invest in public goods has reached the point that we can no longer afford the public goods that we need to prosper and thrive. We’ve spent all the money we need for infrastructure, health care systems, retirement systems, etc. on creating billionaires and fighting wars. If this author is correct, Trump is not an aberration, but the beginning of what will be an ugly, ugly future in the US. The country will be dominated by folks like Ajax, cutting off our noses to spite our faces and accelerating the downward spiral.

https://eand.co/this-is-how-a-society-dies-35bdc3c0b854

[_honorentheos]

Read the article (This is How Society Dies) and, while it was interesting, it seemed like an internet article rather than journalism. That's pretty tough when the author is taking on the whole of Anglo-American society.

I would have liked to see him take on counter issues and examples such as in France where the gas strikes were big news, and Macron is struggling with a society whose expectations are bigger than their available pool of public goods. It would have helped bolster his point rather than make it seem a little too light to take him fully seriously.

That said, I agree with the argument the west suffers from vampiric upselling of an elite but unobtainable lifestyle to be looked on from afar and used to market knock-off middle-class alternatives paid for through debt, and persons syphoning off the benefits of it's society so they aren't available as reinvestment back into the future of the same societies. I still can't recommend the book Moneyland enough for what it says about this problem.

Another point that I found prescient if under-supported is that the consequence of this imbalanced accrual of the benefits and profits of society into fewer hands and offshore tax havens with no national loyalties is an exposure to distrust and further fracturing of people in a society. Like I said in the other thread yesterday regarding binaries, I think the Spanish Civil War has historical parallels we'd do well to consider.

Anyway, thanks for sharing. It was interesting.

[_DoubtingThomas]

The country will be dominated by folks like Ajax, cutting off our noses to spite our faces and accelerating the downward spiral.

I am more optimistic. Quantum computers and A.I. may end up helping the US and humanity. In the US the non-religious are rising in numbers. Imagine what could happen if we get some important ET signal that we can decipher?

[_Some Schmo]

I've been saying for a while now that the US has warped values. I see people admiring filthy rich people and I always think, "You actually admire their psychosis?"

Nobody needs billions of dollars. If you think you do, you're a screwup. Filthy rich people should be in a mental ward, not admired for their greed.

I'm disgusted by rich people who want more. They're screwed in the head and need serious medication.

[_Maksutov]

The country will be dominated by folks like Ajax, cutting off our noses to spite our faces and accelerating the downward spiral.

I am more optimistic. Quantum computers and A.I. may end up helping the US and humanity. In the US the non-religious are rising in numbers. Imagine what could happen if we get some important ET signal that we can decipher?

ETs are the new angels and just as reliable. Nobody is coming to save us. We caused our problems, we get to solve them.

[_huckelberry]

Islamic propaganda? It sure sounds like it.

Well it might not be. It might be propaganda for some other promotion for a cure all which needs an hysterical exaggerated negative about real life in order appear attractive.

[_ajax18]

The country will be dominated by folks like Ajax, cutting off our noses to spite our faces and accelerating the downward spiral.

Then let us secede and have our own country. You can have California to create a leftist utopia.

[_DarkHelmet]

The country will be dominated by folks like Ajax, cutting off our noses to spite our faces and accelerating the downward spiral.

Then let us secede and have our own country. You can have California to create a leftist utopia.

Over the past few years I'm warming to the idea of letting you secede, or just kicking you out. We should have let you secede in 1860. We would have several small, third world countries on our southern border, and Trump's border wall would need to extend to the Atlantic Ocean.

[_DoubtingThomas]

ETs are the new angels and just as reliable. Nobody is coming to save us. We caused our problems, we get to solve them.

There is no evidence that we can do it. We need a higher power to help us.

[_Dr. Shades]

I'm disgusted by rich people who want more. They're ____ in the head and need serious medication.

That sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.