09-27-2020, 03:28 PM
(09-27-2020, 02:20 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:(09-26-2020, 04:58 PM)sbarrera Wrote: But I do see that some Millennials are heeding the call of their elders to take a particular side in the Red v Blue argument.
Sure. BLM and Antifa are out there smashing store windows when it's convenient for their Boomer backers, for example. It doesn't help at all to give Millenials a future, but it does help Boomer factions channel Millenial aggression away from themselves.
My suggestion to protesters -- visit the small restaurants near the protest and enjoy a sandwich, salad, and drinks (including a brew or a wine if possible). Visit a small shop and buy a souvenir. Businesses in the area are not the enemy. Oh, by the way -- if you see someone committing a crime, report it to the police or the local prosecuting attorney.
Quote:The Millenials' actual problems stem from concentration of wealth and power in upper age bracket. That's only going to be fixed when enough Boomers, and maybe X, are ruined or dead, one way or anther. Boomers are too rigid to permit a more rational solution to emerge, and Millenials don't have the experience even to understand what's really going on. Any "vision" involved in what will ultimately become the solution will only emerge from trying to make sense after the fact of how we stumbled into it.
Most likely much of the great wealth of recent origin that is the rationale for treating people badly has as its basis loose fiscal policy and low taxes that will not be preserved after some economic meltdown. If the last High is any indication, taxes will be higher and money will be tighter. Such will favor shoe-string businesses over bureaucratic giants, the latter depending heavily upon loose money and low taxes to reward monopolization and bureaucratic bloat. X will be the executives, and they will not be able to get away making millions for treating subordinates badly or offshoring jobs as Boomers did.
Executive pay will be low enough to be attractive as a reward for long, devoted, competent service, ideally by people who started at the bottom and worked their way up from the shop floor to the sales floor or decided to take some college courses in accounting or engineering while working in the mail room... or whatever. If one wants to make real money one will need to start a business. (That's how it was for twenty years or so after WWII. I miss that). The typical executive was still with his high-school sweetheart, had his household mortgage paid off, and had no idea of what to do with a sports car because he was already too old to appreciate it.
As I see it, a good definition of valid capitalism is that the only way in which to get rich (OK, I will make some exceptions for film stars, some super-valuable professionals, and the like) is to be a capitalist. Not a bureaucrat; not a corrupt politician; not a speculator; and certainly not as a criminal. Maybe life can be comfortable for a skilled tradesman, a college professor, a good salesman, a research scientist, or perhaps a K-12 teacher. Ideally, doing well must depend upon doing good; a market must put that above rewarding people for power or birth.
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.