02-02-2020, 11:56 PM
(02-02-2020, 01:31 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:(02-02-2020, 11:00 AM)sbarrera Wrote: I also agree with the growing issue of inequality and the attendant economic anxiety.
Inequality is not growing. It maxed out around 2000, and had remained at a high level since. Economic anxiety is growing as people realize it's a long term state of affairs.
But history shows that inequality has a cyclical character. It is at its weakest when a community is just getting out of 'survival mode' at the end of a Crisis, remains relatively low in a High that finally sees mom-and-pop businesses start to flourish for the first time and offers plenty of opportunity to young workers, intensifies some as an Awakening brings enterprise and hierarchy under question, and goes out of control in an Unraveling when community is ravaged in an every-man-for-himself mode and those in power abuse power to enrich themselves at others' expense. Finally the system collapses as a speculative boom that did more to devour wealth than to create wealth leads to a financial panic. People already poor have little to lose, but paper profits vanish. What had been wealth commanding the poor is gone. People focus on survival.
Jobs disappear. Relief becomes a necessity. People without work often resort to a method of survival in the sort of investment that people did everything to avoid when easy money was to be had in speculation: low-yield, long-term investment in small businesses. A depression is can make starting a business the least bad of options available. Waiting for paid employment that might never arrive soon enough to preclude hunger? Investment in 'solid' securities when investments are neither solid nor secure? Cadging off relatives? Not if they too are broke. At least real estate is cheap, machinery and raw materials are available at fire-sale prices without reeking of smoke or exhibiting any char; labor is available cheaply. One's own time is cheap, and such an activity as soliciting customers is less scary than having no customers. All that is scarce is well-heeled customers. It takes years to turn a shoestring business into a profitable concern -- probably through the rest of the Crisis Era. The realities of poverty force one to be disciplined about spending and be available to do any work necessary for survival. Small businesses become repositories of community.
Quote:Tearing down institutions may help, but the problem won't be resolved until the largest private institutions, like Google and Facebook, are broken up or crippled enough to permit competition. Historically, that has not happened through political action alone.
But what about the internet retailer Amazon.com? It is difficult for a small-business owner in a retail store to compete.
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.