Gilded Age 2.0

[phuckphace]

Gilded Ages are periods of (apparent) prosperity that follow technological advances, wherein massive amounts of wealth become concentrated in very short periods, leading to the emergence of a new-money elite that is more decadent and immoral than ever before. they're referred to as "gilded" (covered with gold leaf) because the flashy wealth has the effect of hiding the social decay that extended periods of prosperity inevitably bring.

Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller are two of the most famous examples of Gilded Age 1.0 men who were literally wallowing in eye-watering amounts of unearned wealth, the latter to the tune of about 600 billion dollars (adjusted for inflation). these guys were regular proles by birth who owed their success entirely to the chance of having been in the right place at the right time, and from being first movers in new markets created by emerging technologies.

if you think that sounds suspiciously like Bill Gates' biography, well...you're right. further advances in technology (I would place this epoch at the invention of the transistor, for convenience) have brought us another Gilded Age, and predictably it's an even bigger doozy than the last: we tried to harness high technology to save us time and money, instead technology harnessed us. it's like a magic cough syrup that instantaneously cures coughs but also gives you cancer.

http://www.businessinsider.com/rich-kids-of-instagram-summer-2014-7

http://www.businessinsider.com/gs-elevator-holiday-gift-guide-2014-2014-11

until recently I used to believe that the best way to break up concentrated wealth is to raise taxes and close loopholes, but after somebody sent me the two above links I've decided that nothing short of a final solution is in order, if you catch my drift.

tl;dr - kill the rich and their pet robots.

[soundtrack] (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5H467MnzVs)

[Stronk Serb]

Why not just confiscate their wealth and share it for the people and send the capitaliztsz to worker camps where they wpuld flip burgers, clean floors and do stuff like that for a paltry sum they paid their lowest tier employees?

[Horatio Nelson]

I'm down.



What do you think will be the next "gilded age"?

[phuckphace]

What do you think will be the next "gilded age"?

we're already in it now. it really started to take off sometime in the 1980s when we had the perfect storm of neoliberal economic policies combined with the emergence of affordable personal computers and automated manufacturing.

http://www.thebubblebubble.com/japan-bubble/

Japanese industry gained its competitive edge by copying Western products, improving upon them and selling them back to the West for cheaper prices. To compensate for their relative lack of natural resources, Japanese companies focused their efforts on developing innovative and efficient manufacturing methods and improving the quality of their products, giving Japan a strong competitive advantage in high value export products such as cars and electronics (BPIR, 2002). By the late 1970s, Japan’s use of assembly-line robots in automobile manufacturing, which made human error nonexistent and boosted overall quality, sent shivers throughout the U.S. automobile industry, which was still assembling cars by hand.

during this brief period of prosperity, Japan was one big party and everyone spent their new money like there was no tomorrow. they then experienced a much-deserved economic recession that they never fully recovered from.

the lesson we should take away from this is the importance of treating technology, especially new technology, with extreme caution. technology brings us more efficient methods that print money for a little while while the telescreen assures us that all is well, and then it all comes crashing down. each time, we emerge with regrets that we weren't able to predict it (is there an app for that?) and then go right back to doing more of the same.

rich people are assholes but our focus needs to be on eliminating the conditions that give rise to this kind of gratuitous excess to begin with, i.e. not being neoliberals with an autistic obsession for "efficiency."

[DeadEyes]

There is no final solution to fix the decadence of humanity.

[Miserabilia]

:lol3:

True true true. There's no technological or scientific advancement without people feeding of it financialy. Strangely (or not so strange actualy) I get the image of a chubby moustached rich af factory owner during the industrial revolution.

[Stronk Serb]

:lol3:

True true true. There's no technological or scientific advancement without people feeding of it financialy. Strangely (or not so strange actualy) I get the image of a chubby moustached rich af factory owner during the industrial revolution.


There's a reason they used the fat man in a flashy suit for the capitalist by profession population icon in Victoria 2 which takes part from the start of the industrial revolution until 1936.

[Kahn]

Gilded Ages are periods of (apparent) prosperity that follow technological advances, wherein massive amounts of wealth become concentrated in very short periods, leading to the emergence of a new-money elite that is more decadent and immoral than ever before. they're referred to as "gilded" (covered with gold leaf) because the flashy wealth has the effect of hiding the social decay that extended periods of prosperity inevitably bring.

Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller are two of the most famous examples of Gilded Age 1.0 men who were literally wallowing in eye-watering amounts of unearned wealth, the latter to the tune of about 600 billion dollars (adjusted for inflation). these guys were regular proles by birth who owed their success entirely to the chance of having been in the right place at the right time, and from being first movers in new markets created by emerging technologies.

if you think that sounds suspiciously like Bill Gates' biography, well...you're right. further advances in technology (I would place this epoch at the invention of the transistor, for convenience) have brought us another Gilded Age, and predictably it's an even bigger doozy than the last: we tried to harness high technology to save us time and money, instead technology harnessed us. it's like a magic cough syrup that instantaneously cures coughs but also gives you cancer.

http://www.businessinsider.com/rich-kids-of-instagram-summer-2014-7

http://www.businessinsider.com/gs-elevator-holiday-gift-guide-2014-2014-11

until recently I used to believe that the best way to break up concentrated wealth is to raise taxes and close loopholes, but after somebody sent me the two above links I've decided that nothing short of a final solution is in order, if you catch my drift.

tl;dr - kill the rich and their pet robots.

[soundtrack] (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5H467MnzVs)

Have you read Neil Postman? I think you'd appreciate some of the points he proposes in a few of his critical works.

[phuckphace]

Have you read Neil Postman? I think you'd appreciate some of the points he proposes in a few of his critical works.

oh yes, and I agree wholeheartedly with his conclusion that we're living more in a Brave New World controlled by soma than we are in a Nineteen Eighty Four controlled by the Ministry of Love or whatever. it's an excellent example of how insidious an over-dependence on high-technology really is, and its almost limitless potential for abuse. we're so preoccupied with squawking about the more visible government surveillance of our communications that we never address the latter's subtle but far more dangerous role as soma to keep the populace listless and apathetic. of course the NSA's overreach isn't to be excused but I also believe that the ramifications of that are minor in comparison. after all, there's very little chance that the NSA will choose to read your emails or listen to your phone calls out of the many millions they intercept, whereas almost everyone but the most destitute owns a TV set that is nearer and dearer to their hearts than their own family.

case in point: I've noticed at work that the lumpenproles who subsist on food stamps are some of the most prolific buyers of celebrity gossip magazines. that they have little spare cash doesn't stop them from digging enough dimes and quarters out of the ashtray for a copy of Star or Us!. I heard one of them admit to her companion as she was buying her copy, "Haw haw, yeah I like to read these here celeb magazines to make me feel better about myself" (she was barely 35, weighed 375 - 400 lbs., and wheezed like she had lung cancer, as did her two morbidly obese children). I could almost see the marionette strings yanking her flabby arms around.

[Kahn]

oh yes, and I agree wholeheartedly with his conclusion that we're living more in a Brave New World controlled by soma than we are in a Nineteen Eighty Four controlled by the Ministry of Love or whatever. it's an excellent example of how insidious an over-dependence on high-technology really is, and its almost limitless potential for abuse. we're so preoccupied with squawking about the more visible government surveillance of our communications that we never address the latter's subtle but far more dangerous role as soma to keep the populace listless and apathetic. of course the NSA's overreach isn't to be excused but I also believe that the ramifications of that are minor in comparison. after all, there's very little chance that the NSA will choose to read your emails or listen to your phone calls out of the many millions they intercept, whereas almost everyone but the most destitute owns a TV set that is nearer and dearer to their hearts than their own family.

case in point: I've noticed at work that the lumpenproles who subsist on food stamps are some of the most prolific buyers of celebrity gossip magazines. that they have little spare cash doesn't stop them from digging enough dimes and quarters out of the ashtray for a copy of Star or Us!. I heard one of them admit to her companion as she was buying her copy, "Haw haw, yeah I like to read these here celeb magazines to make me feel better about myself" (she was barely 35, weighed 375 - 400 lbs., and wheezed like she had lung cancer, as did her two morbidly obese children). I could almost see the marionette strings yanking her flabby arms around.

0Z760XNy4VM

I had a thoughtful reply to your comments, but it was deleted when I switched tabs to copy the YouTube link and I'm too lazy and tired right now to jot down my thoughts concerning your comments or the video I've provided. Simply put; I'm convinced we're entering, if we're not already living in, an age of decadence unparalleled throughout history, due to our over-bearing reliance on technology in all facets of life.

Rome experienced social decay and degradation of public discourse as she grew old and tired. So did Baghdad. Celebrities and gossip were what citizens were absorbed with at each Empire's cataclysmic ending. They stopped believing in the idea of a Greater Rome or Caliphate, and stopped living by merit as a result, for the most part. Greed and materialism were fostered and embraced, much like they are today.

We're experiencing the fate of an Empire.

(I'll finish this post sometime tomorrow)

[phuckphace]

heh, I wondered if anyone else here had read about the Calhoun experiment. I'll have to come back with the good stuff later but suffice it to say the parallels Calhoun observed in the rat population with human society are unmistakable. particularly notable is the point where a large number of the rats started to huddle in the center of the pen, just sitting there listless. the icing on the cake: the dramatic increase in observed homosexual behavior among the rats (:lol3:) in that light I can kinda see why the Calhoun experiment doesn't get more attention, as it might reveal a few unsettling things about our current arrangement that we'd rather not think about.

[Vlerchan]

I'm really confused as why we're discussing Calhoun's behavioural sink in a critique of our over-dependence on technology.

If that's what we're even talking about. I started getting pretty lost starting at where phuckphace began blaming Japan's lost decades on efficiency gains.

---

Is there also a Neil Postman book to be recommended here?

I've heard him mentioned on another board but since it was by primitivists I didn't give him much consideration.

[Kahn]

I'm really confused as why we're discussing Calhoun's behavioural sink in a critique of our over-dependence on technology.

If that's what we're even talking about. I started getting pretty lost starting at where phuckphace began blaming Japan's lost decades on efficiency gains.

---

Is there also a Neil Postman book to be recommended here?

I've heard him mentioned on another board but since it was by primitivists I didn't give him much consideration.

Calhoun's experiment wasn't related to our over-dependency on technology, unless you'd like to draw comparisons between the human race and mice, in which case technology is believed by some to one day lead to a Utopian society, so I guess there's that. Could it? I don't think so. But, could the fate of the mice colony be similar in nature to that of ours, were our species to find itself under the comparable but not strictly Utopian conditions? Feel free to rip that question apart, I really don't know. To be honest the video's addition was to add to the doom and gloom the thread topic projected.

I'd recommend Technopoly, Amusing Ourselves to Death, and the End of Education.