There has been some discussion around.. let's say 'upheaval', and I'm curious what vision of America would inspire people to actions of that nature. When I take stock of where we are currently and, given our trajectory, what the next few decades almost certainly entail, there's an enormous ****ing abyss to address before I'd be willing to take action. Reason being: If you're going to get locked up over some ****, make sure to get it right the first time.
There's the immediate crises of Trump's overwhelmingly cruel immigration and asylum policies, as well as ICE terrorizing communities. Beyond that, state level GOP are freerolling voter suppression and gerrymandering schemes while the administration is trying to get a citizenship question added to the census. Beyond that, Pruitt, DeVos, Mulvaney, and co. are laying waste to the federal regulatory regime. Up to this point it's reasonable to expect that our institutions (primarily the courts, relevant legal groups) will provide the friction necessary to slow or block the most egregious outcomes.
But then we'd still be left with the raft of systemic policy issues that have had little to no honest debate at the national level like:
- A gutted safety net.
- A billionaire class making the basic functions of democracy at all levels virtually impossible since Citizens United.
- The revolving door between officials and the industries they're nominally regulating.
- The absurd outlays for the military and war profiteers.
- The inability to provide health care for the populace.
- Just about every god damn thing to do with our criminal justice system.
- The drug war and the cycle of misery that it has perpetuated on, primarily, people of color and our neighbors to the south.
- The inability to educate the populace without burdening them with crushing debt loads.
And maybe there's a minute glimmer of hope that through a re-awakening and civic renewal of the American people, along with some mystery disease striking the judiciary, comprehensive reform could be achieved to make interactions between citizens and govt feel more just and equitable. For a lot of posters, this would be a kind of democratic socialist paradise worth taking action. And compared to what we have now they'd be right, so I expect to lose a lot of people at this point. However, we haven't even touched on the primary mechanism driving much of the misery and malaise of the last few decades. The economic order that by its nature reinforces many of the negative outcomes that we try to mitigate via reform. If we want to make a real, lasting impact on the future of us and our kids, to my mind we have to dispose of capitalism as our principal organizing theory.
In a brief defense of capitalism, I'll say that absent its adoption there's a decent chance all of us here would be peasants laboring under some feudal lord. As a means to maximize resource extraction and expand population on a global scale, its efficiency can't be denied.
But after we eclipsed the threshold of resource scarcity, capitalism has ramped into some disturbing trends in order to sustain growth, as measured by GDP:
- Pharma
- Over the last decade, an estimated 94% of corporate profits have been returned to shareholders as stock buybacks or dividends. Between 2005 and 2015, S&P 500 companies spent $4T on buybacks and $3.9T on dividends.
- Over the past fourty years, real wage growth has been effectively flat. Even as we have neared full employment recently, wage growth is nonexistent. This apparently has baffled economists.
- As a cost reduction strategy, companies frequently lay off chunks of their workforce only to rehire them as an independent contractor without their previous benefits.
- Starting in the 80s with junk bonds financing hostile takeovers to the current rage of vulture funds virtually freerolling LBOs via the targets' assets, the capital class has ruthlessly exploited tax advantages surrounding debt. As an example of the short-sightedness and free money involved, the firm Alden Global Capital bought up dozens of newspapers (where journalists work), under the basic premise that it was a failing industry that needed new management. It then proceeded to slash staff, sell off iconic office space, and raise subscription rates. All the while, it siphoned tens of millions in revenues from the papers to gamble on greek bonds and other high-risk assets. This brand of rapaciousness among hedge funders can be found in pretty much any industry that has an element of public good like nursing homes, child care, and education.
- The complete breakdown in moral hazard starting with the S&L bailouts in the aftermath of the junk bond crisis and ending with the bank bailouts after they turned the housing market into a casino. Repeatedly, profits have been privatized while losses have been socialized.
- The "disruption" of silicon valley, which is really just the final resting place for the free money that starts its life with near zero interest rate policy at the fed. In the desperate search for returns, gullible people with too much money think that throwing money at a charismatic "visionary" with little relevant experience and no existing infrastructure will produce outcomes that long-standing industry leaders couldn't achieve, because.. I don't know bureaucracy or something. See: Theranos, Elon Musk, continued subsidizing of Uber/Lyft/MoviePass with no plan for profitability beyond abusing potential monopoly advantage.
- The grifting economy exemplified by reverse mortgages, payday loans, financial advisers, ICOs, and MLM schemes are hopefully the dying breath of an economic theory that has evolved to require human beings to exploit one another's trust, desperation, or ignorance in order to provide for their family.
- Pharma
All of this economic behavior was tolerated and often worshiped by politicians and regulators because it was perceived as growth, as measured by GDP. Without that perceived growth the entire global system of debt-financed deficit spending would collapse in relatively short order (after, of course, the banks repositioned themselves). This unquenchable need for economic activity is why the middle class in developed nations has been and will be continuously ground down by optimizations in the global supply chain and tax sheltering. This process will continue to be gradual and non-threatening, as it has been for the last forty years or so in US terms, and will inevitably leave us in an entrenched caste system.
So for me to see any point in major actions ending in social upheaval, on the table would have to be:
- Death of capitalism, with all the political and social reorganization that entails. The end of the growth-above-all-else regime would also have the benefits of stopping the destruction of our remaining natural environments, slowing climate change, possibly reducing the impact of the ongoing mass extinction event.
- Decriminalization of all drugs.
- Breakup of the big tech companies and a privacy overhaul.
- Liberal use of the guillotine.
- Massive public expansion of housing stock.
- Open borders.
- Expansion of animal rights.