07-22-2017, 01:17 PM
(07-22-2017, 07:13 AM)Mikebert Wrote: Now these are just anecdotes, but data now backs this up, and you see stories about how millennials, particularly males, are not working as much as previous generations. One article I read a year or two ago suggested online porn was a factor. But now the story seems to be around computer games, which are continually becoming more engaging. The idea is young men are choosing to spend more time playing and less time working.
What makes you think this is out of choice? The job market is terrible for young adults.
Quote:Recently I have seen stuff on universal basic income. If you combine a basic income with an addicting videogame I can see young males spending all their time online, expending all their aggression on virtual combat, and thus posing no threat of civil war ever again. To the extent we are heading in this direction civil war may well become a thing of the past.
Sure ... until it spills over into "offline PK", which has happened in Korea.
Quote:This seems overwrought. What we have today is polarization. Polarization is not the same thing as civil war. A common measure of polarization shows very high levels of polarization today and the first decade of the 20th century. What is does not show is high levels in 1860. I would point out that the last time of high polarization was followed by a revolutionary situation in the late teens and early twenties, but no civil war. Instead the situation was resolved quickly by mass arrests and deportation, followed by immigration restriction.
Yet this did not prevent the fall of the capitalist elite regime in the early 1930's. Structural changes of the sort that often have required civil war or revolution happened, without their being a civil war. It never ceases to amaze me that we here are aware of this, in fact S&H have given us a nomenclature (the period of interest was a 4T) and a way to actually forecast these eras, and yet do not see how the issues we face today could be resolved without a civil war, like last time.
Last time we had WWII to vent the stresses.