China has made the world more free than America has?

[The Dharma Bum]

Increased wealth from outsourced manufacturing in China has not resulted in a growth of negative freedom in the US. It has resulted vastly increased wealth in the top one percent of the population.

Due to factors such as high prices due to inflation and the recession any possibility of a gain in negative freedom due to enhanced prosperity has been negated.

Manufacturing in China produces the possibility of increased negative freedom due to increased prosperity but our system ensures that the benefit of this enhanced productive capability is stolen before it can "trickle down" to the people.

[kapitokrug]

[Boris Johnson]

[The Dharma Bum]

[kapitokrug]

[kapitokrug]

[Boris Johnson]

TDB has a point, you do sound a lot like daktoria. Anyway,

Saying 'the elites have power' is exactly the sort of tautological thinking that stands behinds these nebulous socio-economic descriptions. The people with power have power, well, yes, obviously. Whenever I hear talk of the 'elites' doing this or that, I have a habit of thinking of a sort of inverse Goldstein scenario. As who exactly are these people supposed to be. In the British context it certainly doesn't seem to make as lot of sense. As whilst parliament can certainly be influenced by large amounts of money. However, The buck stops with them. And most of them do what they do predicated on polling data. the idea of some sort of top down hierarchy with macaveillian rothschilds caracatures pulling all the strings behind the scene. Well, its a cool picture, but I fail to see the evidence for it.

Thus, also tp represernt mutliculturalsim as some sort of deliberate ploy to keep the working man down, in my mind is a pretty massive whitewash of how it all came abuot, again I can only really talk from the british context. But again off the top of my head I think you'd find similar parraells to France and Germany.

1) Most of it starts in the 1950'ies, where to plug the gap in certain labour markets brought along by the war various groups are invited to move in. this is where our two biggest 'non-British' ethnic communities come from, west Indians and south Asians.
2) Around about the 70-80's immigration policy starts liberalising and the next couple of waves of groups are largely people feeling economic nightmares and/or actual refugees. For example this is when South Wales, the south west and London gets its Somalis.
3) by the late 90'ies largely in the interest of looking liberal and pressures to fuel the economy with cheap labour start to move towards a more open door policy. The integration of eastern European countries into the E.U really throws the door open.
4) by the 2000's, shit, looks like we have to start codifying the protection of multiple cultures in law, least we look like we are oppressing our various

It has, for example driven a massive stake right through the ideological heart of the labour party between Fabians and the classic trade unionist movement. Largely to the expense of the trade unionist movement. So in that last little bit there is some attachment to your point. however, this is more the fault of the trade unionist movement not deliberately trying to be inclusive more than anything else.

However, that its some sort of deliberate plan by 'the elites', i'm sorry I just don't by it. Western politics generally is a hell of a lot less thought out and a hell of a lot more ad hoc than that. Most of the time, I wish there were a competent group of people driving it from behind the scenes.

[kapitokrug]

[The Dharma Bum]

Multiculturalism and worker's rights etc are a pragmatic solution to the obvious problem of inequity in society. Everyone has recognized this factor in our society for quite a while. The rise of progressivism in the modern age is a good example of how a large number of people are becoming conscious of the inadequacies of the current system, which is largely ad-hoc and for the purpose of preserving an obsolete social structure.

Are they appeasements to the large and powerful working class? In a way they are. We've appeased the working class with more prosperity than they have had in the past, some upward mobility through education, and better working conditions. If this hadn't have happened there would have been a successful worker's revolt and transformation into a socialist society by now. By keeping conditions barely tolerable the elite has bought themselves some time to remain the elite.

[kapitokrug]