Social Unrest in the West

polydigm - 11-8-2011 at 06:32

This thread was inspired by a comment from Calvin the other day, saying that he thought the zappa.com forum had become too political. So, rather than crowd our main thread here, "Anything noteworthy happen to you today?", I thought I'd start a separate thread which can be ignored if you're not interested. What I hate about zappa.com, is that many of the members are way too self righteous and can't confine their arguments to specialised threads. It's okay to carry on an argument in a thread for that argument, but trolling about the forum harassing people you disagree with ends up crapping on everyone.

Anyway, here it is, a political thread about perceived ills in the current Western way of life.

polydigm - 11-8-2011 at 06:42

Okay catching up with so far.

Quote: Originally posted by me

Hi Punky. So, what do you make of the riots in England?

Quote: Originally posted by punknaynowned

Protesting over the killing of that guy seemed righteous. But while the BBC seems to want to downplay the budget cuts, the lack of jobs or the whole have vs have not problem - that the government will not acknowledge, apparently - that all seems to feed into it.

I am predisposed to see it thru the have/have not lens as I'm sure everyone knows about me. I have to say, however the rioting all seems really disorganized, ignorant and reactionary. Tellingly, there are no reports of similar rioting and looting in Wales and Scotland. And I'm sure things aren't any better there compared with England. So that says something.

When chaos erupts and people are smashing windows and burning cars and buildings, there will be looting as well.
That it all does not seem to have to do with race or religion or ethnicity is good.
I've heard much over the last decade of the rise of british 'hooliganism'. Crass kids devoid of manners or an understanding of human dignity or worth is awful and another sign of the breakdown of the links necessary in civil society. Not a good thing. I was excited over the winter and into spring of the student protests even if those got a little out of hand. They had a righteous cause.

This all seems quite a bit less of a direction and more of just sheer hatred and frustration. In a depressed economy, if the towny mom-and-pop stores are getting torched, what stores will those left go to in order to get their scones and tea, curry and eel pie? You gotta be pretty desperate to shoot yourself in the foot just because you're pissed. But maybe I'm just reflecting what I hear on the news?

Would be good to hear Papa Was or Caputh's take on it. The Brits over at zappateers aren't in the mood to talk or even mention it.

Doesn't bode well for those precious necessary links of civil society. Especially since the GOV is warning they will fight fire with fire. Though I understand they can't just sit down and have a committee and plan on talking it over either.

More broadly, it could be said that this is what happens when governments prescribe austerity on the people's economy for a disease that the rich created and spread. Some of the wealthy still want to say that 'Greed is Good'. Will the riots teach the wealthy the fallacy in that theory? Probably not. Will more austerity and a racheted up police state stop the rioting? That's doubtful too.

What do you think?

polydigm - 11-8-2011 at 07:10

Agreed. Things are bad there and have been for some time. The analogy of a build up of tinder and a random spark comes to mind. If you go back in history before any civilisation, social groupings were very cohesive out of necessity. Every member of a tribe had a useful role to fill within the tribe. Through the march of history that baby has been thrown out with the bathwater. John Kennedy said "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." What a load of bollocks. If society is not for people and for all people then who or what is it for? What is a country? What's the point of abstract principles when you have a system that engenders so much poverty and so many other social ills?

Capitalism engenders antisocial behaviour, the concepts of winners and losers become woven into its fabric and it lacks the substance to promote community. People find community in adversity under capitalism, not as a founding principle, hence the attractiveness of gang membership. In the UK, there are many rightfully indignant youths that have not been provided a useful role or a reasonable future and have found themselves on the scrap heap of a failing system and many of them lack the input of an alternative morality and have filled that gap with hatred.

Some guy at work, who up until now I had respected, was going on about communist propaganda. WTF?? Some people really believe there are these organised "commies" hiding away out there who whip up this frenzy when the opportunity arises. I really fear for the future of the human race when I hear stuff like that.

I try to live by the moral in my signature below (now gone, it was: cynicism breeds its own reward), but I have my doubts about the capacity of humans in general to be able to do anything better than this crock of shit called Capitalism. Agreed, it's not all bad, and I'm certainly not interested in being dictated to by a certain brand of self righteous socialist. I'm definitely not a believer in smashing this system down with some better system somehow rising out of the ashes, but none the less it has to change big time. It's been around for a long time and still doesn't work. Every time a capitalist economy crashes bad things result and it keeps on happening. Nobody is getting any better at it.

I think humans are basically lazy and want their cake and eat it too. They want to smash what they think represents the system they're jaded with, have no idea what to replace it with and too easily use excuses for behaviour that's often worse than that of those they are protesting against.

Bear with me, I'm only summarising at the moment, but I feel like I have to say something about the direction the West is taking at the moment. There was a lot of propaganda in the last quarter of the 20th C from capitalist spokespeople like Bazinsky (spelling?) and so on, that with the demise of communism would come the shining sun of capitalism into the 21st century. Well, what a crock of shit that turned out to be.

Basically, there are large proportions of certain generations that get periodically shafted by downturns in the capitalist economy and it's just not acceptable. It's not enough to turn around and say that's just life.

punknaynowned - 11-8-2011 at 10:21

Good move, G.

I'm of the same opinion. I've argued with die hard free market nuts for years and they never seem to know what to do when resources become more valuable than people as it inevitably does with capitalism.

Plus, they are convinced that the boom and bust of economic bubbles is a necessary evil for the market system to 'correct itself'. And then play that up like it's a feature not a bug.

One thing I always come back to is how very natural it is for humans to think 'the other guy' is either less deserving or has it better somehow than I do or we do. I worked the evening shift for a bunch of years. Comparison's were always being made with the other shifts. Despite management's attempts to smooth things over or channel that into constructive competition, people's feelings were often tense, even hostile. And we all basically made the same amount of money. Except for one guy who preferred to work alone and was considered by most to be at least one of the best at what we did, anyway. The status quo reflected the dominant paradigm.

It's just too easy to say 'that guy or girl is lazy' and still feel convinced of it, when really, nothing is known about what they do or, how what they do actually affects them. What all they have to go through. So many seem absolutely terrified on the inside. I know the more I learn about people in general, their day to day, their histories, and relations etc. I marvel more and more how people do it. You know? And then find out what they're equipped with, or what they start out with, their education or illnesses, homelife or history. Amazing. I know there are butt-lazy people by the millions, too. Probably billions. Is it too much to say it's all physiology, chemical imbalance or unexamined psychology?
That doesn't really cover it does it? At the same time I agree when you say,

"I think humans are basically lazy and want their cake and eat it too. They want to smash what they think represents the system they're jaded with, have no idea what to replace it with and too easily use excuses for behaviour that's often worse than that of those they are protesting against."

When given the time and opportunity, people want to have a good time. Whatever that means to them. But that's just because so often life isn't easy or a good time. It's hard just keeping up.
Similarly, if they feel oppressed, surrounded, teased with things they can only see thru the glass or on the telly, and whose legitimate means for access is an 'emotionally threatening' endeavor, people are gonna want. People are gonna react eventually.

One thing I lament is the cutting of funds for education. Ranks pretty high in the definition of stupid. The Governor of my state just sent back a check to the Feds for $31 million to establish the exchanges for insurance for the national health care act. He doesn't want to participate, but instead said, it has 'too many strings attached.' But he went to Texas last weekend to go to the Gov Perry's prayer meeting called 'The Response'. He's cut all the social welfare programs in the state so the shelters for the homeless that are overwhelmed in this recession won't have anybody to mind the actual crazies (unmedicated) who are inevitably at the shelters. Cutting all funding to the Board of Regents who manage the financial end of our three state universities. So they scramble right before classes are supposed to start. He cut all state subsidies for the arts. The list goes on. Taxes stay down.
The governor here is one that says 'that's just life'.

As far as which system, I like the old adage 'everything in moderation', with the corollary 'and where applicable'.
I also like the one, 'Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints'. Maybe I should add, 'It's not always the other guys' fault!'

polydigm - 11-8-2011 at 23:09

Yes, my statement seems extreme. I don't mean that humans are hide bound by their laziness, but that given the wrong circumstances it too easily comes to the fore and once it's surfaced it's a hard habit to break. Like a dog that gets a taste of blood, but not as undoable, just not easy to break.

There are many people who look at this in black and white: "These kids are just bad, or wrong-uns or whatever and they have to be dealt with as such" - which in itself is used to justify what would normally be seen as unacceptable behaviour. My statement in my last post wasn't meant to absolve me from caring, just the opposite, some people would say I'm just trying to find excuses for the bad behaviour of these people, but I like to think I understand how they got like that.

It's exactly the point you make about the bubbles of capitalism. My wife and I are well established because we've been able to make the most of things when the economy has been right for it and we've been able to ride the busts without coming undone. But it's timing that's out of your control. There are points in your life when an economic bubble can be devastating. It's inequitable.

When I was a teenager the unemployment rate was 1%. Guys I knew from less fortunate backgrounds than mine, some of whom were bordering on fuck ups always managed to have jobs and so things didn't get too bad for them, but that's changed. The suburb I grew up in now has an unemployment rate over 20%. That is squarely the fault of the system.

NOTE: I've come back to edit this, because the line about kids and wrong uns etc sounds like it's me saying it. I meant that this seems to be the opinion of lots of people and I don't agree with it, but the way it was written looked like my opinion.

[Edited on 21-8-11 by polydigm]

punknaynowned - 12-8-2011 at 14:03

You're right. Habits are hard to break. Choices become more difficult in the outcomes without accurate info at the outset.

By experience for me, I've learned to look at things in as many perspectives as I can be made aware of. If that makes any sense. As many ways of looking at something, I either have picked up the viewfinder or want to. This doesn't mean I've done everything or want to. But trying to find to understand more about whatever has always filled up my time since I was a teenager. Was it because I was taught to read before pre-school? Or that when I was very young, my mother would read me to sleep in the afternoons to put me to sleep? I can remember asking her what the letters were and I was probably 3. To this day I read the news and history and lit, all sorts of things, it largely takes all my time. The more I learn, the more I want to know.
But I do sit around a lot. Don't seek out money constantly or keep dreaming up schemes for money or figure out how I'm gonna pay for or just acquire new gadgets or whatever. Like I guess a lot of Americans do. I dream up other stuff in between finding out about more stuff I never knew before.

In comparison, Many people want to limit their choices to keep things simpler. And are often content with not really knowing or clearly understanding the likely outcomes of their own choices - they'll take somebody's word for it - so long as the choice they have to make is simple or black-and-white. More often than not. This is a kind of laziness but can be merely not knowing, not being aware of the layers involved in what's going on. And somebody usually ends up losing or feeling they're merely putting off some inevitable doom and somebody else makes money.

Sometimes I think that people's belief in aliens or ghosts or Loch Ness monster, secret conspiracies or whatever is actually good for people even if completely fictional. It encourages a kind of imagination or a spur for getting the idea to look outside the box or with different glasses. That it's not a sin to notice and say out loud that the emporer may not wear clothes or that the situation comedy or videogame or popular story actually comes in a box that does have a lid and sides. And can be put on a shelf and ignored.

I was gonna go in one direction and ended up somewhere else. I'll be back.

polydigm - 18-8-2011 at 16:03

Capitalism is a system that enables the talented to exploit the less talented and feel justified in the process.

polydigm - 21-8-2011 at 02:42

I've edited my post from 12 Aug 2011 and added a note to say why. The statement in quotes in the second paragraph is not my opinion and that wasn't clear in the original post.

punknaynowned - 21-8-2011 at 13:46

I understood you. Or at least understood that there may be days when a teacher might think 'they're all bad, ungrateful, can't learn' etc. But if as in your case you made a career out of it, you would have to see that as a passing bit of pique or you wouldn't stick with it.

Your quote, "Capitalism is a system that enables the talented to exploit the less talented and feel justified in the process" is interesting. Stories I hear about the richest in finance, justify their behavior by how much money they make. They figure they are paid so much BECAUSE they must be that much smarter than everyone else.

In my opinion that's just silly. The system anymore is leveraged to benefit those on the inside and at the top of the hierarchy. We have a revolving door between government and wall street. People get their Harvard business degree and work for Goldman Sachs, then go work as a lobbyist or regulator or adviser in W DC and help make it easier for finance to make more money. Then they leave Washington and go back to Wall Street for the big coup. Not everybody can. It is highly competitive. But doesn't produce jobs and only hedges and speculation, not products. It's so sad. And most people have no interest and so don't hear about it. That would be difficult anyway because they all have PR firms whose job it is to make sure they all get their positive spin. Makes the true knowledge harder to find out.
Because they can afford to.

I heard something I like that reflects reality and seems fair. People should aspire to be conservative, but governments should aspire to be liberal. Problems seem to develop when they both go in one direction. Socialist governments could work if people had the inclination to not get hooked on the 'handouts'. The good of all can be maintained if people have the discipline to take care of themselves as much as they can without looking to scam anybody else.
Makes sense to me.

polydigm - 23-8-2011 at 01:27

That comment about capitalism and talent is a retort to the usual capitalist banner that it's a system that enables anyone with the motivation, to work and get ahead, which is just bollocks. This is what I meant about the not all equal part. People who are born smart will find it easier to get a higher education, and let's face it, whatever Zappa said about a higher education, it's what gets you the highest paid jobs.

Zappa was technically petit bourgeois and they're a dying breed. Very few opportunities to be one of them and succeed, so it's just not an option for most. Most of us have to work for a living and in that group, the majority under capitalism, the higher your level of education, the better your opportunities.

KAPTKIRK - 27-6-2012 at 23:52

Theres a fireman who just retired from the Stockton,CA fire deptment at $157,000.00 a yr. pension.This from a city on the verge of bankruptcy.Fire science 101 will get you a job if your one of the firemen's own.Same with most of the utility disticts in the rural parts of CA.HS (12th grade) to work at $40,000.00 starting salery.Your right about schooling,if you've an AA degree (two years) you'd start at $60+ thousand a year.Most opt to go to work and earn that much by they're second year anyway! It's the good ol' boy network.It's corrupt and stinks!:devil:

Your analagy of FZ's being petit bourgeois and a dying breed got me thinkin' about Diva.If her last name wasn't Zappa,I don't think she could support herself by her..ahem art. All the other kids have flown the nest,but I think Gail wants to keep Diva at home with her.She's running a commune now with all the people she needs to run UMRK. Ha,ha! Gails a hippie at heart! :crazy:

polydigm - 28-6-2012 at 02:47

It's not just an analogy, he was petit bourgeois. He worked in his own business and his income was generated from the creation and sale of commodities. A lot of people have tried to discredit Marxist class analysis by saying that modern capitalism is more complicated than it was when Marx was alive. The fact is that the means of production are still pretty much totally privately owned. If you want to make a living and you don't own any capital then you have to work for someone, that hasn't changed.

There are many "middle class" people out there who want to believe they're special and that they're not proletarians, but the fact of the matter is they don't own any part of the means of production and besides a house on a tiny parcel of the earth that they might partly own (some bank or other owns the rest via a mortgage) they work for someone else to make a living and whether it be in education or at a factory or somewhere in between it's ultimately work for the owners of the means of production.

Whatever the window dressing, the essential facts of capitalism have not changed. We're still having periodic crises, the last one was a doozy and is still happening and no matter what they do they can't fix it. They can keep it alive but it's a fucking miserable and lame beast.

DED - 28-6-2012 at 08:14

On salary pensions and so on you can tell nothing.
There is a brut/nett calculation needed. Then you have the amount of money they actually get. But that is not everything. The state is present in your wallet every time you open him. Taxes like value added taxes extra taxes on alcohol, petrol, energy and so on. The value of everything is far less than the sales price, because manufacturers, distributors, retailers they all have the same problem. Nett is not Nett but a new Brut amount. In Holland 30 upto 50 % of your income is not payed out but goes directly to the state. From the money you get state gets 20 upto 40%. The result is a small amount of money that you can actually spend on goods and services but they are more expensive than necessary. From all the money you start with only 5 to 7 % will be transformed in goods and services you need. In fact even that is a point of discussion. Since most products are produced in China. A severe amount of that 5 to 7 % is spend on stocking and transporting.

polydigm - 29-6-2012 at 09:52

I just bumped into an old colleague yesterday who lost about $200,000 from his super when the global crisis first hit. He was going to retire two years ago. He's still working to make it up. That is a real, tangible and major life changing event. His case is far from rare. We have a very particular super system in Australia and a lot of people got side swiped by the crash. My super is peanuts but I still managed to lose over $5,000.

BBP - 29-6-2012 at 10:07

Hate to sound stupid, but what's a super?

polydigm - 30-6-2012 at 05:37

Superannuation. It's like an extra pension only you pay for it directly. Our system is different to others so I need to explain.

In Oz, when a taxpayer retires they are entitled to a pension which basically enables one to live a very slight whisker above the level of the average comfortable pet dog. In the UK, your national service payments are separate from your income tax payments and your pension there is indexed against how much national service paid during your working life. Here it's just one income tax, but everyone is entitled to a pension. Mind you, it's worse than the UK system because here if you were frugal, worked hard and saved your money, you will get less pension because it is means tested whereas in the UK you get what you paid for. Here, if you were unemployed all your life, paid no tax and only ever received government benefits, you'll receive a full pension at retirement age.

So, for a significant proportion of modern australian history, many people have been paying money into private superannuation funds to have steady incomes when they retire to supplement their, catch 22, reduced pensions from having been sensible. Then along comes a Labor government back in the eighties I think (can't remember the details, big deal) who negotiated for compulsory employer paid superannuation in lieu of significant pay rises which were being battled for at the time. This kind of fixed the economy up a little, the banks needed overall savings to be increased, striking workers needed to be appeased. So, when we get paid here, our employers have to also give a 9% payment into compulsory superannuation.

So now we have (1) Government Pensions (2) Compulsory Superannuation (3) Private Superannuation. Not only that, most people just keep the Compulsory Superannuation and supplement it with their own payments rather than having a separate private one.

So super is just the standard short cut here for superannuation.

Many people lost one or a couple of hundred thousand dollars from their superannuation funds when the global crash arrived. It's pointless and insensitive to talk about the peaks and dips of capitalism and say that these superannuation funds will eventually revive. What does eventually mean and then, how long before the next crash? If it crashes the day before you intended to cash it in, your life has been ruined. The system survives and revives but real living individuals have their lives destroyed in the process.

BBP - 30-6-2012 at 15:21

People's work tend to have their own retirement fund: this can be organized per company or per trade. When you work, a part of your salary automatically goes to your pension.

Unfortunately the retirement funds here have been speculating with their money, and lost: most pensions will drop significantly this year. It seems very inresponsible to me.

polydigm - 2-7-2012 at 14:08

Irresponsible? That's very restrained of you. The fact of the matter is, in very simple terms, that labour creates actual physical wealth and we live in a system that subverts that and distributes wealth like shifting sands. They make it all sound very magical and something that can never be fully under our control but it's basically theft. Actual, physical wealth does not disappear overnight the only thing that changes is numbers on paper and notice who the majority of the losers usually end up being, yep that's right, the people who created the wealth in the first place.

punknaynowned - 2-7-2012 at 15:02

yes, poly, just as you said. Have you heard the Barclay's scandal this weekend? There will be others who get fined etc. but the right in Congress say they want to let funding of these regulators lapse again... also, Romney is scheduled to meet with the head of Barclay's next month, doing what politicians do, looking for campaign contributions...
oh what a mess
Don't let 'Disaster-Mania' come to your town! :bouncing:

punknaynowned - 2-7-2012 at 15:03

glad what I saw about Australia passing the carbon-tax law... hope it helps

polydigm - 3-7-2012 at 16:20

I just wish these people would stop fucking around and just go nuclear. Everyone's carrying on like we've still got bags of time.

BTW, above I mentioned National Service. Jesus I can be thick, it's called National Insurance.

Caputh - 1-8-2012 at 18:24

Hah! At last I find something where I disagree with Poly - nuclear power!
I hope you won't hate me for it, but I'll give you my reasons quite briefly.

a) Safety - if the Japanese can't run nuclear power stations without accident, what hope is there for the rest of us?
b) Waste - noone's worked out what to do with it.
c) Big business - not very nice lobbyists have invested heavily in it, since the 50s, in some cases actively hindering research in other areas.
d) Peace - you can build nuclear weapons as a result.

Surely Australia is the ideal country to develop solar power?

However, at least one of my best friends supports nuclear power (her husband's an atomic researcher); I'd be interested to hear why you think it's a good idea.

BBP - 1-8-2012 at 20:36

Absolutely. Nuclear power is NOT a renewable source for reasons of waste, and it's sad that it took another Chernobyl to make people realize what a bad solution it is. It didn't work for Poly, unfortunately, so maybe he needs a three-eyed fish on his plate.

polydigm - 2-8-2012 at 11:24

I'm exhausted and I'll get back to this, but when it comes to the environment there are no win-win solutions. Nuclear is way better than carbon. The other side of the coin is that current nuclear researchers will tell you that they already have solutions to the current nuclear waste problem that don't provide bomb type products, that require an economic commitment to realise properly. It's not the technology, it's the will. We're all going to hell in a picnic basket.

BBP - 2-8-2012 at 11:40

Does that bring down the dangers of a meltdown?

polydigm - 2-8-2012 at 23:41

Yes. The point is that the technology has come a long way since the beginnings of the anti nuclear lobby back in the sixties, but a lot of the working reactors out there are old technology and this requires money and commitment to fix. If capitalism is a reason to fear potential solutions to our long term environmental problems then in turn capitalism is responsible for not fixing them up. You can't have it both ways.

The newer technologies that are possible with nuclear power are not going to make anyone rich in the short term and threaten the current pecking order in the energy business but they are hugely long term solutions with a tiny, tiny carbon footprint. Even with older technology, how badly has nuclear power gone in France? Even people like Ian Lovelock have turned pro nuclear.

BBP - 3-8-2012 at 10:38

Sorry, not convinced: I don't know very much about it and won't be able to understand much if I tried either, but I do know that Fukushima was considered to be able to withstand all earthquakes and tsunamis, just like the Titanic was unsinkable, and with the lives of millions of people and risk of radiation disease in case of disaster, failure always being an option: the consequences are too great to take that risk.
No reason to juggle eggs over a Persian carpet as long as the forces of wind, sun and water aren't being exploited to the fullest.
If solar panels are installed on every house, windmills as far as the eyes can see, every brook has its own hydropowerplant and that's still not enough, then you should start thinking about anything as hazardous as nuclear power.

Me, I'm thinking of installing human-powered dynamos in fitness centres all over the western countries. Kill two birds with one stone: keep the fitness entry free for all, should rid us of obesitas as well. There's an enormous amount of chemical energy stored in us, going to waste on a jog or on the football field.

polydigm - 3-8-2012 at 19:54

Analysis is showing that solar and wind will not be enough. Consumption of energy in private homes is not the key issue. It's the energy cost of our industry that is the major factor in the problem. The ratio of energy consumption per square metre is way too high for a solar solution to work without unrealistic predictions of its possible future improvement.

Fukushima is an example of what I was saying about older technologies. Scientists already have designs for nuclear power plants for which Chernobyls, Fukushimas and so on would be impossible and that would go a long way not just to avoiding large build ups in waste but that would also use up much of the currently existing waste from the use of older, much less efficient technologies without producing products that can be used in bombs. But we have to have the will to spend the money required - it's current economic modes of existence that are destroying the environment.

You say you're not convinced, but nuclear energy not being implemented properly is the same class of problem as the level of inaction in the face of our current global environmental problems. If we decided to go nuclear en masse but were not prepared to take the proper effort in implementing that nuclear solution we'd still be less worse off than current predictions of what will happen if we don't. There are no solutions without some kind of cost.

Caputh - 4-8-2012 at 19:34

What makes me slightly worried about the claims that they've sorted out nuclear power is that very similar people said the same thing 10, 20, 30 years ago - and it wasn't absolutely safe.
The trouble with nuclear as far as I'm concerned is that the risk might be minimal, but the consequences of an accident are enormous.
I also think that major companies have no interest in developing an energy source which makes you indepedent of them (e.g. solar).

[Edited on 4-8-2012 by Caputh]

polydigm - 5-8-2012 at 23:32

This is my main point. The negative consequences of nuclear power generation so far have not escalated. For instance, many of the problems that occurred in the US early on in the nuclear era have since been avoided and other countries that have followed have avoided similar problems. Meanwhile, the cost of oil, gas and similar forms of energy have continued to increase up till the current global crisis we are facing with an already far greater list of negative environmental impacts.

polydigm - 14-3-2023 at 01:26

I'd forgotten about this thread.

My point about nuclear is that you have to compare it fairly with the alternatives.