Paracelsus
Innovative Casanova
      
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RE: 10,000 feminists hanging from the gallows along city streets. In your lifetime.
(03-25-2018 03:46 AM)Razor Beast Wrote: So are you saying a universal basic income will pacify people enough to not rebel because of all their freedoms being stripped away? Maybe in a futuristic society, definitely not existing western society. At least in USA I can't see people giving up all their rights without a fight.
I have news for you: there already is a universal basic income in the United States, it's (a) it takes slightly different forms, (b) people don't choose to call it by that name and © it's a lot lower than you'd expect. And people will give up every right they have if it's in support of their identity. See the current crop of young idiots wandering down a street in Washington believing that they're going to change things any more than the combined forces of Michael Moore and the pussyhat parade did over the past, oh, 12 years or so.
The reason this is so, dating back to well before Trump got in:
Quote:So start with an interesting hypothetical: does everybody need to work anymore? I understand work from an ethical/character perspective, this is not here my point. Since we no longer need e.g. manufacturing jobs-- cheaper elsewhere or with robots-- since those labor costs have evaporated, could that surplus go towards paying people simply to stay out of trouble? Is there a natural economic equilibrium price where, say, a U Chicago grad can do no economically productive work at all but still be paid to use Instagram? Let me be explicit: my question is not should we do this, my question is that since this is precisely what's happening already, is it sustainable? What is the cost? I don't have to run the numbers, someone already has: it's $150/mo for a college grads, i.e. the price of food stamps. Other correct responses would be $700/mo for "some high school" (SSI) or $1500/mo for "previous work experience" (unemployment). I would have accepted $2000/mo for "minorities" (jail) for partial credit.
While all those monies have different names and different "requirements" they are all exactly the same thing: paying people who are off the grid, whether by choice or circumstance, indefinitely. i.e. Living Wages. However, they can never be called that. They have to pretend to be something else: this is for food, this is because of a medical problem we just made up, this is because you were caught with weed so we'll leave you in here for 6 months until we sentence you to probation. And they have to have these fake reasons to give taxpayers a little emotional distance, deniability, otherwise they'd go John Galt, after all, they have all the guns. If they can invade Iraq, how hard is it going to be to take the Whole Foods on 3rd?
That "emotional distance" is not hyperbole, it's not me being a lefty deconstructicon, it is an absolute requirement of a psychic defense of identity, of self-worth. The point is not to get you to accept that hipsters deserve food stamps, the point is the opposite: to enrage you, infuriate you, so that you will resist-- because then and only then will you pay for it.
If this seems implausible to you, which it must-- that's exactly the point of it-- consider the following extreme analogy, which surprisingly will be easier to understand, which is also the whole point: Say your father raped you repeatedly for a decade. Hold on, slow down, it gets worse: now you're 40, and he shows up asking you for $2400 because, and I quote, "you have a responsibility to take care of me." There he is in your living room, eyeballing the nice things in your home. If it is a fact that you will inevitably give him the money, is it easier to for you to pair it with your venom or your sympathy? Though it's enraging, there is a perverse pleasure in giving that bastard the money. It tells you that you showed him that you are better than him.
That's how America works. The system needs you to be willing, not wanting, to pay for this, and getting the existing (narcissistic) society to believe that it is their "responsibility" (Left's word) to pay for "laziness" (Right's word)-- to WANT to pay for this-- is absolutely impossible. Why can't we just all agree on what a fair share might be, take care of each other? Didn't you major in English Lit? "Homo economicus" is not reality, envy is an immutable characteristic of our consciousness, it is practically Kantian, some of you will get a minor hold of it but even your priests are chock full o' it. If the porn isn't high res you can't get horny, but you can hate a guy at 1000 paces without a scope. That's human nature. Envy, rage. It's not all we are, but you cannot discount it.
The only way to get them to agree to pay is to give them a way of rationalizing the "responsibility" as, in some way, for them: you'll get a tax break, you'll be rewarded in heaven, you are a better person for it, thanks, this means a lot. Can you imagine a hipster looking at a salesman and saying thanks for your service? So that's out, use the default: rage. Just like how you get people motivated to go to war. No, no, no, no, not the people already waving flags, I mean the people who don't want war. Said every liberal in Congress one magical day in 2003: "I'm not going to let those oil bastards Cheney and Bush get away with their racist imperialist plan, which is why I'm going to scream obscenities at them as I vote Attack."
The system isn't thinking short term, it needs this to work long term, those hipsters are going to be getting food stamps forever, or do you think if the economy rebounds, old liberal arts majors will suddenly become appealing? Like a woman who squandered her youth on fun but disreputable men, she will find herself at 45 wanting to marry, but alone. "That is such a disgusting, sexist, archaic thing to say." I feel your rage, and you are right. Alone nevertheless.
VII.
You might retort that there's no money to pay for 25 more years of hipster apathy. Admittedly, this is a compelling argument. But the total cost of food stamps is $80B. The annual budget deficit is over ten times that. America's economy is one big gigantic retail sales event. Is the economy back to like it never happened?
![[Image: retail%20sales2.JPG]](https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/images/retail%20sales2.JPG)
The underemployed econ majors will recognize that this isn't "real", inflation adjusted sales and the last few years are based on overpriced high-end goods that only Aspirational 14% can afford, and that for the other 85% of America purchasing power has dropped to 1997 levels, but as Whole Foods says, whatever.
$80B is a lot, but how much is actually going to hipsters, how many hipsters are there, really? 73? 74? What purpose does this rage serve? If you Rage Against The Hipsters, you will be that much more likely to "allow" food stamps for everyone else. The hipsters are diversions. They are sacrifices. How much hate have you focused on Gerry since you heard about him? All of it.
To clarify, this is not some kind of socialist ploy, it is a function of the way America (read: narcissism) works, it doesn't need to be centralized, it is the sum of individual vectors pointing in different directions. Here's the other side's example: when they talk about raising taxes on the rich, why do they pick a "low" point and push it higher? Should the highest rates be at $250k/yr? $300k? Another way of doing it, which is precisely why they cannot do it, is start at the top and move down. "We need $1T. Ok, top five guys pay 90%. Not enough? How about top ten guys pay 90%. Not enough? Top...." I'm not advocating this or any other policy, not my place, I am pointing out that doing it the way it's done protects the 1% by letting the Aspirational 14%-- who crave recognition and are easily identifiable and hatable because they are poseurs, just of a different kind-- act as human shields. They take the bullets, the unknown mega-rich take tinted window rides to the Hamptons. During those tumultuous 80 seconds of OWS-- and BTW, those people gave up hanging out after only a trimester, do you really think they're ready for 40 hour work weeks?-- the majority of the personal attacks were against people who made <$300k, not >$50M. It's easy to hate, and so the media nudges you in the wrong direction.
VIII.
You might think that the rage is the spark for a transformation of America, a full scale Dagny Taggart meltdown or Bolshevik revolution, depending on your hat. That's not how it works. If this is narcissism, then its purpose is protecting identity, defending against change. Doesn't matter what side you think you're on, unless you are unplugged you are for the status quo.
Here's an example: in the "radical left" (their words) magazine Jacobin, the editor writes a defense of Gerry and Sarah as a way of arguing for the abolishment of, well, everything Randian. He's against the "work ethic", he wants a paradigm shift away from American producerism-- the idea that your value is based only on what you can produce for the economy-- towards social rights, e.g. Living Wages. I disagree with everything in it, so what? but it is very well written and reasoned, and if I played the same game as him I'd want him on my team.
The point here is that he wants CHANGE. Here is the last paragraph of the article, tell me if you can find anything supporting the status quo:
Rather than the "deserving" or "working" poor, with its connotations of moral judgment and authoritarian social control, it is time to begin speaking the language of economic and social rights. For instance, the right to a Universal Basic Income, a means of living at a basic level that would be provided to everyone, no questions asked. Against the invidious politics of the work ethic, it's time to argue that some things should be granted to everyone, simply by virtue of their humanity. Even hipsters.
Sounds sublime. But Gerry already had a living wage-- he spent it on the University of Chicago, 41 years of food stamps in 4 years. If everybody knew in advance the outcome was going to be unemployment and living wages, then why doesn't Frase challenge the capitalist assumption that college is money well spent-- could have been used differently? He can't. This thought cannot occur to him, not because he is dumb, he clearly isn't, or because he is paid by a college-- money is irrelevant to him. He can't because his entire identity is built on college, academia. He is college. Take that away, he disintegrates. So in the utopia he imagines, college still exists AND people get living wages. Call me a Marxist, that's what we have now.
Second, and more importantly, he thinks he's a radical progressive, that he wants a paradigm shift away from capitalism towards social rights-- but he wants to keep everything else about capitalism completely intact. He is explicitly against producerism, but he wants to replace it with consumerism. He wants to make sure people can get what they want, not teach them how to want. In his utopia of no questions asked Universal Basic Income, do retail sales go up or down? The system has won.
Remissas, discite, vivet.
God save us from people who mean well. -storm
(This post was last modified: 03-25-2018 04:10 AM by Paracelsus.)
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