cecirdr

My title might be a bit hyperbolic, but stuff like this worries me. I love to read and I love reading on a kindle. This has been going on for a while, but it has now reached absurd levels.

I've been wondering where to make this post. I don't want to limit it to a book review. I would like to discuss the ideas presented in this book by Peter Turchin. (He wrote an earlier book called Ages of Discord where he went into details about the math and the statistics he used)

If you've read it, what are your thoughts? How to we convince the elites it's in their best interest to stop fomenting dissent and stop their own infighting? IOW, reproduce something like the New Deal the US used in the 1930s to stop unrest and shrink inequality.

The primary drivers of social dissolution are the immiseration of the working class due to shrinking wages and the concomitant rise of elites who seize that capital for themselves. According to Turchin, there is no way to stop societal dissolution, political chaos and govt overthrow except by way of a reduction of the number of elites and a reduction in income inequality. The New Deal accomplished this via non-violent means, but history shows that violence is usually the method used. When violence occurs, many of us peons die (so competition for jobs decreases and wages go up), but elites also perish or get aggressively demoted into the lower echelon. A reduction in their numbers means there's less skimming of the average person's wages, and the less infighting in the elite ranks means that society can finally unify because we're not being weaponized against each other.

The fixation by elites on social issues (like race, gender, patriotism, religion, trans rights etc) is a classic misdirect meant to get the working class divided into sides to "fight" for that particular elite group's agenda. (and to cement that group into the ruling class).

I ramble. I just finished the book and found that it had many "ah ha" moments for me. I recommend it if you haven't read it. If you have, I'd love to hear what you thought.

When I’m browsing I often get interrupted and have to put my phone down. Or I read one post, go back to the main and it refreshes. Often, I recall a post I wanted to read next, but on refresh, it’s just gone.

If I try to search to find it again, I can’t even get the post to show up there. I even use a word that was in the title, to no avail. Oddly enough, if I go to a different instance, I can see the thread/post again, but here on beehaw, it went poof.

Has anyone else experienced this? Does anyone have ideas on what is happening and how to stop it?

Thx!

Right now, I’m playing the early access version of Baldurs Gate 3. I’m getting ready to put it down (frustrated: BG3 has the potential to be good, but without controller support, I’m getting really frustrated with the UI. ) and switch to Yakuza Like a Dragon.

What are you playing now and what are you looking forward to playing next?

I took my buddy camping. He’s 17 years old or so. I got him from the shelter, so I don’t really know. He spent most of the trip just sleeping. 😄

One of the steps in a societal collapse is a loss of faith in financial tools. The stock market has seemed like a casino for a long time to me, yet it is still cranking out money for the upper crust. It is the primary driver for business decisions that produce short term gain, but reduce long-term viability for the companies and for the environment.

Currently, there are no other real vehicles for the average US citizen to invest in for their retirements. In my parents' generation, there were more. Heck, they had a lot of money in CDs and even those earned a decent rate of interest. Yet everything now is such a low return, or boom/bust like housing, so little guys like me are pushed into getting retirement accounts that are stocks. I'm not keen on that.

What's even worse is that many jobs will employer match if you put into one of the stock market based retirement funds. But if you want to just put your money into a savings account, you miss out on the employer matching. So there's strong incentive to keep putting your money into the stock market.

So I keep trying to read the tea leaves to figure out when the casino is going to collapse. ...or even if it will. I think there are some folks that just assume that it will keep making money for the wealthy and the rest of humanity will just get left behind.