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polydigm
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Social Unrest in the West
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.
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polydigm
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Okay catching up with so far.
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? |
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polydigm
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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.
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punknaynowned
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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!' 
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polydigm
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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]
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punknaynowned
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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.
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polydigm
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Capitalism is a system that enables the talented to exploit the less talented and feel justified in the process.
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polydigm
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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.
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punknaynowned
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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.
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polydigm
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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.
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KAPTKIRK
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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!
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! 
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polydigm
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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.
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DED
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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.
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polydigm
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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.
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BBP
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Hate to sound stupid, but what's a super?
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polydigm
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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.
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BBP
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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.
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polydigm
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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.
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punknaynowned
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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! 
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punknaynowned
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glad what I saw about Australia passing the carbon-tax law... hope it helps
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