So how badly does th economy suck exactly?

[eynon81]

[nordictruce]

i don't know what has happened but business is picking up. I own a company that is really dependent on people's "extra income" (web development, people don't start building eCommerce sites, projects and things when they don't have extra money). Business is doing about 35% better year over year from last year.

[eynon81]

[nordictruce]

Web Development.


I live in the Mid West but we take clients from all over the country, with a hand full throughout the year overseas.

[broken robot]

[Kane]

Well you're basically saying that in making those points, however accurate they may be, we need to develop a delivery mechanism as well (For those less versed in the technocratic nomenclature - glass steagal). We have to create a "marketing" director that ties those points back to theory/ideology which can be broadcast to the general public and gain proper appeal. You still believe in the nobility of democracy and that people can be made to do good, that they're worth saving (ala superman/batman protecting us). But you know what? They still make those comics to this very day because we seem to continue to need saving...

Sad to say this but I think we deliver these purely technical prescriptions for success because we already know, through years of experience on this forum and in communicating with others, that changing ones mind about something inherently political that can impact another person's life to be a very fruitless endeavor. Bush got a second term. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura, and Al Franken have all had their time in the political spotlight. As governors and a senator. Chris Christie didn't resign after bridge gate. The DOJ under Holder has just now gotten its first guilty plea from a financial actor for violating federal laws.

It's not about the public not "getting it." They just don't care anymore so long as they have a job that pays well enough. That's the frightening take away from all of this, at least IMO. That's generally what I've learned by staying an active member on this forum and those before it. Participation rates are down. Primaries outside of Presidential runs get so little coverage outside of the huge sums of cash devoted to proliferating disinformation on a massive scale. So even if people were interested in it they'd have to vet all the bullshit. And people aren't so they don't, they just take shit at face value or vote for one of two parties.

A disgraced politician or one of his/her subordinates doesn't get away with nearly as much in Asian nations as they do here. Their culture is different. Local level corruption in China is under a f**k microscope right now most of all because of the threat its come to pose for the broader economy. But they have the culture as well of shame, shaming the entire family is one is found guilty of something socially unacceptable. Forget about the social freedoms arguments and just focus on political corruption. They simply don't get away with it in China. Or South Korea. That ferry sank and the President dismantled the f**k Coast Guard. There's speculation the President herself may step down in the coming days.

Maybe it's cultural but it's definitely different. We don'd hold our elected officials responsible for their actions anymore, or their lack of action. Because we remain apathetic, uninterested, or ignorant altogether. Compare that to India where the BJP just won by a landslide after a decade of failed reform policies under the other majority party...

In a nutshell, we stopped giving a shit about making our positions broadly acceptable by others once we began to realize large swaths of the US couldn't care less. I'm reminded of one of my co-workers and his response to all of my queries regarding politics: "just fix it." He listens to sports talk radio all day. He doesn't care.

[Spider]

Kane and BR are legit. All of their posts are awesome tonight.

[exploited]

Yeah, some very good posts all around.

Personally, I don't think the issue is so much technocracy vs. democracy, or policy vs. ideology. I think the issue is the nature of democratic involvement. To be perfectly frank, representative democracy is broken. You can convince as many people as you want that a particular policy is worth pursuing, and have them vote for a person who wants to pursue that policy, but that still doesn't make it into a reality (at least not necessarily). How many times have you heard average people talk about how politicians don't deliver? This talking point is partly bullshit, but it has a great deal of truth behind it too: for all the promises that are made by any particular candidate, only a fraction are ever really delivered on. And that isn't because we don't hold politicians responsible... that is just the nature of the beast, where inertia will beat out a good idea 99.9% of the time.

Saz has always expressed pretty anti-democratic sentiments on these boards, and I think that is fundamentally what we are seeing here (our particular flavour of democracy is antiquated). People aren't really all that apathetic. We like to say they are because they don't vote. But the simple truth is that people are vastly more aware of what is going on then they ever were historically, it is just that historically, people joined organizations in order to propagate their views. Unions, fraternities, sisterhoods, churches, all of these organizations were way more popular, and people took their cues from them. They didn't necessarily care about issues so much as how it would impact their social standing, how it would impact the relationships that define these organizations.

So the problem, in my mind, is that we, as a society, have become drastically more individualistic. We don't derive as much worth from our jobs or our church or our union or fraternity. These organizations have been on the decline for years and years. More then ever, we derive value from our individuality, which is why stuff like consumerism, wealth inequality, social justice, lifestyle politics, environmentalism, counter-culture, etc. has become so incredibly heated and important in recent years.

The way to move forward is to decentralize decision-making. If you ever want to see democratic participation return in any real way, we need to double down on direct democracy. f**k voting in some guy who may or may not keep his promises. I want to vote on bills. I want to write those bills. I want to use the incredible power of crowd-sourcing and online communities to directly implement the changes I want to see in my community. I don't organize politically because I view the way we do legislation as fundamentally broken - I shouldn't have to organize with other people to have my views heard. I should be able to vote on issues directly, and I can assure you, I would do EXACTLY THAT if I were given the opportunity. I think the same can be said for many people. You will always have a segment of the population that has no interest in voting, whether for representatives or directly. That is perfectly fine. But I have no interest in going out and joining organizations and trying to climb hierarchies in order to propagate my point of view. I have no idea why I should have to convince a representative to do anything, when it would be far easier and more efficient for me to simply cast a vote for what I want.

[Philly]