Are collective efforts necessary? by SignyM

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Are collective efforts necessary?

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Tuesday, November 8, 2005 11:59
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Monday, November 7, 2005 10:54 AM

Fletch, I'm not a moron.

Yes, Athens had flaws, I didn't say "Athens" was copied. "Democracy" was copied. This happens in biological evolution all the time. A say a type squirrel let's say a yellow squirrel, has some advantage, like better grabing claws. Initially, sure, those genes will perpetuate, and with them yellowness. But yellowness has no advantage, and gets lost in the shuffle, red and grey squirrel get less and less yellow squirrel blood over time, but keep the grabby claws. This is not a theory, it's a well established fact. This is in fact how evolution works, biologically.

So there's no reason to assume the same isn't true socially. Athens gets copied, and every time it is, it's copied less and less. Sure, marble columns come, but they aren't as important to America as they were. They don't get copied because they're "admired." Why is everyone being so subjective????? There is nothing subjective about evolution. Everything gets copied. Sparta was copied, Rome was copied Jerusalem was copied, everything that left a mark on history will have someone admire it and copy it. The point is that copies of democracy survive better than copies of Sparta.

Next,

No,

You say "dreamtrove really is doing this" after I consistantly prove that no I'm not some shallow flake, I really do understand this stuff. I certainly don't apply the label "Socialist" to everything I hate. I certainly don't give it to Bin Laden. I don't give it to the christian right, I give it to PNAC because the majority of its members were former socialists, and they haven't altered their philosophy from what it was when they were socialists. Nazis had socialist in the name and so did Soviets, as did Yugoslavia and Saddam Hussein's Baathist govt. This doesn't come out of nowhere.

Sparta as a socialist model appears in a lot of socialist texts which I used to read when I was a student, and a socialist. I also remember many intellectual discussions about this with my fellow intellectual socialists, back before I was completely disillusioned with the idea. We would discuss it as the flaws of Athens, and how the US had made a mistake following in Athens footsteps, and how Aristotle was right, and how the Soviets were right, and BTW, Sparta is mentioned in the Soviet consitution as the model for their society.

Now sure, in all fairness, Sparta wasn't socialist, because socialism wasn't invented yet. It would be much more fair to say "Socialism is Spartan" which in many ways it is, and it is so intentionally. Sure, there were flaws in Sparta, which aren't in some socialist states. There were some flaws in Athens that aren't in some democratic states. This is because this is how evolution works. All of the characteristics of Sparta did not lead it to victory, some of its characteristics were incedental or even detrimental. But Sparta, idealized, distilled, was the model for the modern socialist state to the same level that Athens, idealized, distilled, was the model for western democracies.

Quote:

The role of society isn't to compete with Korea it's to create an environment for the safe raising of children.

Okay, I can see we're never going to be completely on a the same page here. I so disagree with this statement. Safe society never evolves anywhere. If all a society achieves is human survival, IMHO, it has no reason to exist. The world's greatest problem is not that it needs more humans.

Raising children successfully to compete with Korean children is an essential part of competition, you cannot compete without it, so I think your argument is a pure fallacy here.

Quote:

We talked at length in the other thread about your fetishistic love of your mythical "1955 world." That world could exist because the economics that supported it existed at that time. America had come out of a war with excess industrial capacity recently converted from war use. There had been 5 years where people hadn't been able to replace customer items. GI's came home and started new families at about the same time. Pretty much every other industrial nation, including most of the US's international competitors were in ruins.

Of course I know all of this and I saw this argument coming sooner or later, or rather, I expected to get it immediately, which is why I said 1955 or 1985. There are many parts of 1955 society which did not depend on lend-lease part II to support themselves. 1985 worked quite well despite being in competition with the rest of the world. 1995 was still working economically, but had begun to fall apart socially. 2005 society seems on the brink of collapse.

Of course our making of the worlds weapons in WWII was not totally divorced from our ability to compete, it was a symptom OF our ability to compete. Now Japan or Korea would hold that spot.

The problem with this society is most certainly NOT that it has made changes to compete with Korea. It's that we have suffered from a serious amount of moral decay and lack of social stability to the point where parents no longer raise children, and people no longer respect their elders because authority is totally corrupt and crooked and everyone is on drugs. On top of that, the total non-evolutionary decay of our socialist, yes socialist, public education system is leading to generations of unkilled uncompetitive workers.

This is sort of decay is not nearly as widespread in Korea and Japan.

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Monday, November 7, 2005 11:55 AM

FLETCH2

I disagree. People don't raise children as well because both partners choose to work. They do that either for economic advantage (so they can afford that flat screen TV) or out of nescessity. Other nations like Sweden compensate families economically to help raise children, the result is that

1) the kinds of social decay you are talking about doesn't happen
2) the economy is not as productive as that of the US.

They have chosen not to compete in raw economic terms but they outproduce you in terms of social stability and the quality of education. I would argue that you can't compete with China and maintain a society that holds the values you demand. You blame things on the media, but that's a business making a buck, capitalism is a force of progressive change but it moves things forwards indisciminantly without thought for any consequence but the next stock holders report.

Gangsta Rap sells so they sell it, Britney sells so they sell it. If Gregorian chants were big they would sell that. They have no interest in assessing the merit or adverse effects of what they sell --- why should they as long as the product itself is legal?

Now you could chose to interfere in the market and ban things you dislike (assuming for the moment that the constitution permits) but that would just mark you as a hypocrite, "free markets are ok as long as it benefits me" is a protectionist with looking for excuses. You want 1985 back --- take the economic hit that would intail, disolve the WTO cut back on the growth of the global economy, move back to protectionism to favor American business, and live in the Reaganesque themepark you would build for yourself.

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Monday, November 7, 2005 1:08 PM

DREAMTROVE

Quote:

I disagree. People don't raise children as well because both partners choose to work. They do that either for economic advantage (so they can afford that flat screen TV) or out of nescessity. Other nations like Sweden compensate families economically to help raise children, the result is that

1) the kinds of social decay you are talking about doesn't happen
2) the economy is not as productive as that of the US.

I disagree. I used to think this was the case but I have several problems with it:

1. Houses where both parents work do not seem to have "problem" children at a higher rate.
2. Sweden is not particularly less competitive than other European countries of a similar makeup.

I don't think this is principally an issue of home economics, though it is somewhat a factor. I think it is principally one of education, and crime. Drug dealers run rampant in the US selling to minors, and drug culture convinces them that drugs are a worthwhile investment because it provides two things which conventional society is not providing them with: Money and Sex.

Many young people have said the following things to me, I must've heard each of these many times:

1. I can make some extra cash this way, it's good money.
2. I do it so I can get laid. When all the girls are high, when you're high, it's easy.
3. It's harmless. There's nothing wrong with drugs. This is an enlightening experience, man.

Problem One is clear. No available employment plus a harsh market that makes both demand and prices remain high.

Problem Two is a result of not having a normal social outlet for young people. Dances have been replaced by drug parties and dating with drinking.

Problem Three is a simple one of education. Our failure to provide the fundemental background to understand how drugs work and what they are doing to the body has left kids incapable of understanding the complexities involved, and has led them to get their information from the dealers themselves, who have a vested interest in lying.

I'm going to back up a sec and say wow do I 180 degrees disagree with you here on the basic premise.

1. The US is not MORE competitive now that it has an altered mega-decay society, it's definitely LESS.
2. The US is not moving TOWARDS free market, it has been moving AWAY from it for some time, TOWARD state socialism through govt. sponsored company monopolies.

Gregorian Chants were never made to appeal in that manner, so it's not relevant.

Gangsta Rap sells because it is on all the video channels all the time combined with sexual images. This is subliminal advertising controlled completely by the company which owns the music. Viacom has complete control over the entire video music industry which drives the record sales. If 50s rock and roll appeared with sexual images, and Rap was sung by old guys in ties, teens would buy 50s rock and roll.

Which is not to say rap is social decay, clearly it's just a different kind of music. Sometimes it does carry a message of social decay with it. Not always though.

Britney also sells because they sell it. It's not a free market in the least! Britney didn't become popular by competition! This is nothing at all like it worked even 7 or 8 years ago. This total market dominance is relatively new. Matchbox 20 and Nirvana succeed by competition, as had guns and roses, john cougar melloncamp and black sabbath before them. Sure, there have always been "canned" creations like britney, but now there is nothing else. Viacom is a total media monopoly.

I never said I wanted to interfere in the free market. I'm saying bring the completely dead and burried free market (as far as music is concerned) that once existed back to life.

Rap can continue to exist, but if it weren't a totally control sexually stimulated subliminally advertised product with no competition, it would not dominate as it does. There was, after all, rap in 1985. Kids listed to it, white kids listened to it, I listened to it. It was actually in many ways better than the viacom product now called rap.

1985 back would not be an economic hit at all, it would be a boon. Don't you see that we live in a depression? A depression brought on by the pseudo-socialist pro-monopolist policies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush?

Has anyone even noticed that the anti-trust hasn't been evoked in years?

The anti-trust btw is almost soleley responsible for the 20th century economic success of america. Without it, we would have been just a very large european country, not an economic force that dwarfed the world.

Now, banks buy banks, software companies buy software companies, and pretty soon we'll have monopolies in every industry.

Also in case you haven't noticed this one as well: The driving market force of the moment is the public till. Corrupt Govt. contracts are so lucrative no one gives a damn about the customer anymore, the only customer of importance is uncle sam.

I think in total contrast to your proposal, that social stability and economic growth go hand in hand. Where decay occurs, people don't work or are unabel to compete effectively, and they fail to produce and succeed in the global competition that is utterly inescapable. Sweden does a decent job of this as a capitalist country, which is not to say that they don't have their economic problems due to the long term collapse of the western european social safety net. By contrast, we are increasingly failing to compete as we lose sight of free market capitalism, lose sight of values and we fail to be able to compete.

It's not a fairy tale wonderland I'm looking to create, it's a functional society. I think this is a liberal myth that any retrograde motion is a fantasy theme park. It's a lie which keeps all wrongheaded movement and decay firmly in place and prevents us from ever correcting mistakes.

Finally, the WTO is not what it seems. It is far from the free market, it is an attempt to control the free market, and it actually quite dangerous in that respect. I don't support it or its lesser entities, NAFTA, etc. This is not about capitalism, it's about ownership, and ownership is ultimately about monopoly. I believe some sort of world free trade agreements should exist, but the people guiding this force at the moment are incredibly corrupt, and the results are proving disasterous.

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Monday, November 7, 2005 2:51 PM

FLETCH2

Sex sells. I had a friend who back in the mid 1980's collected "Hair metal" videos that depicted leather clad rocker girls gyrating to the music. I don't go out of my way to watch Rap videos but what few I've seen look no worse than that.

Is the Britney and Christina thing any different to the Madonna and Cindy Lauper "wannabee" rivalry of 1984? Miami Vice can equally be said to give the message that drug running got you money/clothes/girls. Of course this all happened in Reagan's America so perhaps you chose to ignore it?

If I went into a political chat space and suggested that America had gone downhill since 1995 I'd be savaged by Republican attack dogs for the meer suggestion that things have gotten worse since Republicans controlled Congress.

Media companies make money selling media, media by it's nature tends to push boundaries. People complained that Warner Bros. were condoning and glorifying mobsters in the 1930's, now films like the Petrified Forest and Public Enemy are seen as classics and Bogart and Cagney are Icons.

Your friend that takes crack has a character flaw, he would have that flaw no matter what. It could be his upbringing is suspect, or his biology or he may just be simple minded. I'll let his defence lawyer pick the excuse he wants to use. The government didnt give him a welfare check to buy drugs, they didn't encourage him to buy drugs, they did not hook him on drugs, they didn't provide him with drugs. If the money was stopped tomorrow, he wouldn't say "wow, I'm no longer on welfare, best kick crack and get a job" he'd be hitting on you for a loan or stealing your stereo.

Viacom did not make him an addict, nobody forced him to watch or listen to any rubbish they may put out, they at no point told him to "just say yes."

The guys that peddle drugs dont do it because they are making a social statement or aim to re-engineer society they do it for easy money. It is in that sense a perfect example of unrestricted capitalism, there is a need, there is a supplier. Supplier fills need and makes instant large profit. Supplier does not consider long term negative effects on client or society. This isn't even capitalism's fault since exactly the same thing happens with a lot of products legal or illegal. Capitalism is a force of nature, not for good or for bad it just keeps going matching supply and demand and generating wealth.

Oh and I lived in Sweden. I paid over 50% income tax, but it is very nice to live there. Of course I dont think you are suggesting doing the same in the US.

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Monday, November 7, 2005 5:37 PM

DREAMTROVE

Fletch,

No, not claiming they were worse. Sex is the advertising mechanism by which otherwise not particularly sexy or even very good gansta rap is sold. And I'm trying to be objective here, as in not very good for gangsta rap, like DMX or Ice Cube is good, and Nate Dogg or R Kelly just isn't very good. So okay, there is some subjectivity here, but truth is, there is no differential on quality with MTV et al because they OWN the entire spectrum of the content they play, and sell it all.

But what's happened here is that there is control by the corporate monopoly of the music makers and of the channels. The product is created by the station which is playing it to you and it is sexing it up to sell it to you, creating that subliminal subconscious need for music that really isn't very good. Mildly entertaining, sure, but if you check out kids who have no MTV, they just don't listen to that same sort of Viacom music. In fact, almost exclusively, the kids i know that have grown up in non-TV households think current music is junk and are heavy into 70s punk, classic rock, maybe some motown. All of which makes my point for me.

I think that the music scene is indicative. I watch some of the DLs that get posted on the blogs full of political punditry, a lot of new and interesting viewpoints, but again, as you gravitate towards the mainstream media, the viewpoints start to sound like press releases from the party heads. Either written by Dick Cheney (Bush can't read or write) or by Howard Dean (who just doesn't understand that the white house playing hide the salami was HIS party's admin :) )

But seriously, independent media is needed, but it's also coming. Internet revolution majorly still is ahead I'm sure.

Quote:

If the money was stopped tomorrow, he wouldn't say "wow, I'm no longer on welfare, best kick crack and get a job" he'd be hitting on you for a loan or stealing your stereo.

This is so true. Actually, to be honest it's heroin, but I've known quite a few addicts of different sorts, including some actual crackheads who bought crack on public assistance.

Seriously though, this means the public money isn't helping him, and it's making my more business for the drug dealer. If the money runs out, he simply doesn't buy. I think he's stolen in the past, but it's much harder to do here than in the city. Everyone you know in a place like this, you're always going to know them, and there is no one that you don't know. There's really no one to steal from or to sell to if you did. I think that's really more of a city problem.

I don't really want to argue about this, I am confident I understand it very well, and just wanted to state my position, that it might add a different perspective, as I appreciate your perspective.

I think overall Europe has some problems paying for the bills of what it's set up. That's why taxes are getting out of control. I think it's a major problem here too, and we need to roll back income tax if not abolish it. I don't really care about the rich, one way or the other. I don't believe a trickle down effect exists, and I don't think that you make more money by taxing the rich. I think they cut loopholes, and if you force them to pay, they'll just leave, and become citizens of the Cayman Islands. I don't really think it matters whether they're citizens here or not. But in the working world the tax burden is killing us, and it's killing our ability to compete internationally. It's long and involved, so I won't go into the hows and whys unless your interested. Myself, I rarely make enough money to actually owe taxes.

The main thing we have to do is reduce spending, and the main area we have to reduce it is in our military particularly overseas. It would be nice to kill some of that corporate welfare as well. It'll take a lot of work to turn this country into a competitive society again.

I'm curious about sweden. I've always heard it held up as a well running society, but I've never been. What do they do right? possibly wrong? or what might you keep? what might you change? Also, how is the level of individual freedom compared with the US. less? more?

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Monday, November 7, 2005 11:24 PM

FLETCH2

My situation was a little odd in that I spent a little more than six months in Stockholm every year (just enough to pay Swedish income tax in fact) but spent the rest of the time in the US and Asia. I can tell you what it was like for me at the company I worked for and what I was told by people while I was there, though it might not be universal elsewhere.

It's clean, efficiently run, has good public transport and services. Swedes tend to work very hard, long hours are common and though not always expected they do tend to be appreciated. People tend to work flexible hours around a business "core hours" which is when most meetings are scheduled and you are expected to be there.

This "core" ends relatively early -- around 3PM so that some people can leave to collect their kids from school. Usually both parents work so this is kind of essential. We were a young team so most of us didnt have kids but for example our manager would leave at 3PM get the kids, do the evening meal etc then come back to the office in the late evening to complete her work day.

Maternity and paternity leave are quite long, maternaty leave is I believe almost a year, paid paternity leave was 3 months. You don't need to spend this all at one time, so it's common for fathers to bank a little time and take that off later when their wives are starting back at work.

My company was obligated to offer a certain number of hours every year in professional skills development -- usually 2-3 weeks of paid technical courses. If a new manager is needed for an existing team a shortlist is prepared and the team interviews the applicants --- the first time I've ever given my boss a job interview!

Sweden offers free classes in Swedish to all new immigrants and tends to have a generous policy in accepting refugees. I don't know how hard they try and find these newcomers work. The few I knew outside of work were arabs and Kurds who had their own shops and businesses.

Public protest is allowed but only after approval with the police. The center of Stockholm in front of the Culture House has an area for peacefull demonstration, complete with a raised "pulpit" area for the speaker. While I was there a lot of Palestinians were protesting Israel.

Generally public officials don't seem to have lives much more different from ordinary folks. Olaf Palme then Swedish prime minister was murdered while walking in the street without security, Anna Lindh a foreign minister was stabbed in a department store. You can walk through the parliment complex as a shortcut to get to Gamla Stan -- Stockholm's old town.

Taxation is used to back up social policy. For example, winter nights are long and very dark. Back way back Swedes had a reputation of being hard drinkers to deal with what we now know to be seasonal depression. To curb this taxes on alcohol are high, both in bars and elsewhere. You can only buy strong liquor in state run shops which have very restrictive openning hours and high prices. All of this doesnt stop binge drinking, but the drunks you do find late night on the Tunnelbana tend to be well dressed -- it's hard to be a poor drunk. It's also hard to be a pan handler, there are still some beggers but they usually dont get much. Swedes pay high taxes for social programs so they feel justified in believing that they have given already.

One bizarre tax is one on living space. You are taxed on the size of your dwelling, so the more floor space you have the more you pay. This is independent of the quality or value of the building, so the run down loft will cost as much as the nice mansion down the street if they have the same floor space. Some areas -- kitchens, bathrooms, corridors and service space are not included. I had an appartment with a tiled hallway the same size as my bedroom. Why? because the hall is exempt from tax, the person I rented it from had put a desk in there and used it as a tax free home office!!

Having a car there is very expensive in taxes and fuel costs. In addition they make it very difficult to pass the test -- almost nobody passes it the first time and rescheduling can take a while in busy districts. Needless to say part of the reason is that you have to pass a "slippy test" to prove you can handle a car in slippery road conditions.

So in answer. Sweden is very nice to live in, you get a very nice standard of living for your tax money, with parks, good healthcare, good levels of public service. High taxes means you both need to work but they give time off to raise children and companies are mindfull of family needs.

Freedom etc? Nowhere in Europe has the US idea of freedom, we live so closely packed together that compromises to allow smooth communal living become almost essential. I would say that for a Swede not standing out from the crowd is more important than trumpeting your individuality. That doesn't mean they are not individualistic they just dont feel the need to prove it. They have a LOT of clubs and group social activities. Companies have team sports days and family picknick type events. It might be that my company was especially clannish but it was something more than just your employer, there was a two way commitment between it and you. Hey they gave you Christmas presents and reminded people when it was your birthday. If you did a good job they let you know, which was nice.

Anyway, just my impressions.

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Tuesday, November 8, 2005 3:57 AM

DREAMTROVE

Hmm. Sounds a little too structured for my tastes. I like the idea of freedom of work hours, I think our labor system is silly.

Here's one of the things which has struck me as distructively silly:

The 5 day work week. Short term memory is 24-48 hours, which means taking a two day break is guaranteed to wipe out anything recent short term and work-related. Studies have been done that show that for people involved in brain-labor, ie. non-manual labor, it takes until wednesday to be more or less where they were on friday. So each week we basically get three days progress from.

Cutting the work day off at three would definitely solve this problem and give parents more time with kids. I can see extended parental leave. Mostly I think we need to get into a positive economic situation where job is less of a desperation situation, and where you could conceivably take two years off from your company and go back later, provided you weren't needed for a particular project (the optical engineer shouldn't quit in the middle of a new laser project) but as long as you can take that break without damaging the company there's no reason you shouldn't be able to go back to work for the same firm. A paid year off doesn't seem economically feasible to me. We are in a global marketplace and no amount of wishing will make it go away. American car makers and stereo makers, should there be any left, will always have to compete with their foreign competitors who are operating at 90% efficiency (90% of dollars spent on hiring an employee go to that employees salary).

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Tuesday, November 8, 2005 11:59 AM

FLETCH2

Just to be clear the work day didn't finish at 3PM just that within a system of flexible hours there was a core period where everyone was expected to be there, so that you knew you could get everyone together for meetings. Some members of my team were in at 5:30AM every day and left early. Others put in an extra hour for the first 4 days and then left at 3PM on Fridays so they could take a long weekend. I worked close to 9 to 5 because that was what I was used to. Nobody clock watched, and we probably all worked some extra unpaid time. On the other hand there is no such thing as a "personal day" but if you needed time off for things like the dentist there was never a problem.

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