05-11-2020, 04:20 AM
Toynbee suggests that in the earlier days of a situation, the common man does extraordinary things. As the civilization goes decadent it takes extraordinary people to do middling things. Like businesses, societies and civilizations do not grow out of their problems; unless they take drastic measures to solve those problems the problems grow with the business, society, or civilization. When the business, society, or civilization quits growing, the problem keeps growing.
Rigidity may look impressive, but it is not as stable as flexibility. It is easy to chop wood with a hand because wood is rigid enough to not bend. Even a gold bar (and gold is one of the softest of metals is flexible enough to rebound instead of breaking.
People seek improvement in their lives -- progress -- if such is available. If not they may turn to nostalgia or to the hereafter, neither of which solves any problem in the here-and-now.
The big crisis for capitalism may well be the end of scarcity. Command structures of capitalism depend heavily upon the threat of firing with the risk of destitution or at least loss of much that one has as one draws down on resources. But what happens if people can get what they need easily?
We have found a terribly-flawed solution -- to commit people to paying a high price to private interests as economic rents just to survive in a plutocratic society. Figure that even allowing for inflation a studio apartment isn't any better in 2020 than when it was built in the 1970's, but that the slumlord (and a 40-year-old apartment is typically a slum unless it has been significantly renovated) is charging ten times as much now for the same tiny apartment now as in the 1970's. Sure, taxes and utilities may be higher -- but not that much higher, especially in California, where Proposition 13 basically sealed property taxes. The trick of plutocrats is to get people to work longer and harder for less so that those plutocrats can get more.
But a higher level of economic rent (and this means an abnormally-high return on assets due to contrived scarcity and institutional corruption) as opposed to rental costs (although the two are related) creates its own economic distress while fostering great gain, indulgence, and power to slumlords. Slumlords are nobody's favorite capitalists unless those capitalists are in the same general business. They are not innovators. Maybe one admires the great innovators in electronics, media creativity, or consumer marketing... but not someone who simply milks a scarcity that will never go away.
I have noticed that as a general rule, people are most likely to be political liberals if they are renters, no matter how well off they are in other aspects of life. It could be that renters fail to see the costs (most obviously taxes and utilities) that landlords pay. So go ahead and vote for the millage that promises to add funding for the public schools, and go ahead and vote for an increase in the income tax to fund highway improvements, public parks, and public health and other things that make life tolerable. Except -- the slumlord profits most if people get minimal public services, which means lower taxes on property and income.
Economic elites increasingly treat the common man as a cash cow who has duties to those elites but can expect little in return other than the privilege of survival. We are far from there yet, but I contemplate the end of the Roman Empire, when the "barbarian" invaders took over. The barbarian bands were able to offer the common man, typically an abject serf, the easiest deal possible to accept: lead me to your masters' loot and we will free you from your masters and even let you farm without paying them. The barbarians killed the masters, took the loot, and left.
The Right offered tax revolts as the model of freedom -- except that now we are the subjects of the narrow interests that profited most.
Rigidity may look impressive, but it is not as stable as flexibility. It is easy to chop wood with a hand because wood is rigid enough to not bend. Even a gold bar (and gold is one of the softest of metals is flexible enough to rebound instead of breaking.
People seek improvement in their lives -- progress -- if such is available. If not they may turn to nostalgia or to the hereafter, neither of which solves any problem in the here-and-now.
The big crisis for capitalism may well be the end of scarcity. Command structures of capitalism depend heavily upon the threat of firing with the risk of destitution or at least loss of much that one has as one draws down on resources. But what happens if people can get what they need easily?
We have found a terribly-flawed solution -- to commit people to paying a high price to private interests as economic rents just to survive in a plutocratic society. Figure that even allowing for inflation a studio apartment isn't any better in 2020 than when it was built in the 1970's, but that the slumlord (and a 40-year-old apartment is typically a slum unless it has been significantly renovated) is charging ten times as much now for the same tiny apartment now as in the 1970's. Sure, taxes and utilities may be higher -- but not that much higher, especially in California, where Proposition 13 basically sealed property taxes. The trick of plutocrats is to get people to work longer and harder for less so that those plutocrats can get more.
But a higher level of economic rent (and this means an abnormally-high return on assets due to contrived scarcity and institutional corruption) as opposed to rental costs (although the two are related) creates its own economic distress while fostering great gain, indulgence, and power to slumlords. Slumlords are nobody's favorite capitalists unless those capitalists are in the same general business. They are not innovators. Maybe one admires the great innovators in electronics, media creativity, or consumer marketing... but not someone who simply milks a scarcity that will never go away.
I have noticed that as a general rule, people are most likely to be political liberals if they are renters, no matter how well off they are in other aspects of life. It could be that renters fail to see the costs (most obviously taxes and utilities) that landlords pay. So go ahead and vote for the millage that promises to add funding for the public schools, and go ahead and vote for an increase in the income tax to fund highway improvements, public parks, and public health and other things that make life tolerable. Except -- the slumlord profits most if people get minimal public services, which means lower taxes on property and income.
Economic elites increasingly treat the common man as a cash cow who has duties to those elites but can expect little in return other than the privilege of survival. We are far from there yet, but I contemplate the end of the Roman Empire, when the "barbarian" invaders took over. The barbarian bands were able to offer the common man, typically an abject serf, the easiest deal possible to accept: lead me to your masters' loot and we will free you from your masters and even let you farm without paying them. The barbarians killed the masters, took the loot, and left.
The Right offered tax revolts as the model of freedom -- except that now we are the subjects of the narrow interests that profited most.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.