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Comment by martythemaniak | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if what we're seeing is a quantitative change leading to a qualitative change.

It's undeniable that old people have always held power in society, from hunting-gathering societies (various elders/shamans/wisepeople) through early civilization (Senator comes from the Latin "senex" for "old". Senatus = "chamber of old men"), though to today.

At the same time, their numbers (and effectiveness) were probably limited, either by a more pyramidal population distribution and/or by lower life expectancy (including duller minds in older age).

I think what we're seeing for the first time in history is a huge swath of healthy, long-lived older people, throwing the relative balance way off and leading to various situations we see across many different societies.

I like to sum it up as Boomers eating the young and I don't think things will change until the numbers/demographics do, ie, Millenials will experience a lost generation and things won't start to look good until we're well into middle-age.

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> we're seeing for the first time in history is a huge swath of healthy, long-lived older people...

Exactly, and they cast a disproportionately long shadow over society and politics.

EDIT: just look at the recent Irish referendum on same-sex marriage. A vast majority of the "no" votes came from the >60 cohort. I'll wager the age breakdown of last weeks election would reveal a similar dynamic: the young want change and meaningful progress while the old continue to vote for the past, keeping our culture and politics firmly rooted in the early/mid 20th century.

Not on the topic of SS marriage but just on the "young want change vs old vote to continue the past" point.

As I've gotten older, one thing that I've consistently found is that the young want change. Always. Regardless of whether it's beneficial, been tried before and negative consequences were seen, would only benefit certain people or negative outcomes long term are clearly visible: they want change for sake of change.

Older people have a lot more experience in observing human nature. There is a very big reason that the slogans around "Wisdom comes with age" and "Young know it alls" have existed for so long. They've been observably accurate.

It's a lot easier to get people fired up about things that they don't understand, because any contentious subject has two sides and the fire generally shows that you only understand one of them.

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” - Mark Twain

>Not on the topic of SS marriage

But we shouldn't dismiss this. On the topics of racism, same sex marriage, sexism... really any injustice of the past out there, the old tend to want to hold on what was in the past regardless if it was good or bad.

To think that the old have a better grasp on things ignores all the times they do not.

>There is a very big reason that the slogans around "Wisdom comes with age" and "Young know it alls" have existed for so long. They've been observably accurate.

It works 100% of the time when it works. The old have wisdom only if you consider the cases they were wise. If you look at issues like racism or homophobia, the young are the wise ones. Society advanced one funeral at a time because the we lose their 'wisdom'.

If the young want change just for the sake of change, then the old want stability just for the sake of stability.

> If you look at issues like racism or homophobia, the young are the wise ones.

Maybe I'm getting older myself (30's), but the way that racism, homophobia, etc. is being handled by the young is troubling at best, facist at worst.

A large majority of millenials support restrictions on freedom of speech when it's considered hateful. What ever happened to 'sticks and stones...'?

Honestly, on this issue, I see millenials about as bat-shit crazy as the other extremes - everyone's favorite uncle or old neighbor from the deep South, stuck in the 1960's.

>Maybe I'm getting older myself (30's), but the way that racism, homophobia, etc. is being handled by the young is troubling at best, facist at worst.

What I see is the way that free speech is being handled when it involves something offensive. But this is not something unique among young individuals; all that is changed is the topics. Which generation was around when obscenity was allowed as an exception to the First Amendment?

I'd say that it is for the good that the young are allowed to change things, but only after they are not very young anymore.

The problem is that we are both biologically making that enabling age older and older, and at the same time we are making the world more and more dynamic. And I'll risk a guess that this is a problem that will get solved, whether we come out with a good solution to it, or we only have bad ones.

I like to think of it as a filter. The truly worthwhile things will continue to be fought for and will eventually get through. If nothing else, the struggle should provide people with opportunities to see how they can make a difference outside of legislation.

When a problem is caused by legislation, it could also serve as a warning to the problems that come from trying to solve problems that way.

But that struggle being lengthened also means the continued systematic oppression of certain groups for decades, perhaps even generations longer. I'm unsure if that's really acceptable to say "eventually worthwhile things will get through" when groups of people right now are dealing with systemic social issues.

If a homosexual person is fired for being homosexual (legal in many states), is it really acceptable to approach that with "well if its truly worthwhile to fight for, sexuality will eventually become a protected class"?

I'd generally look at issues like that from an entirely different perspective (personally). If it's possible for legislation to oppress people, it seems like the goal should be to make that less feasible. What consequences come to businesses in general by classifying certain groups of people as protected classes while others aren't? Does it discourage businesses from hiring those groups in the first place simply from a risk management perspective?

Experience will definitely show that as you approach a certain age, you'll have a harder time finding a job and a big part of that is the risk a business takes on if they have to fire you for underperforming.

Understanding that there are always consequences to legislation, no matter how noble the intentions, will lead to looking at solutions from different angles.

The legislative solution is "Make THEM do this!" while the non-legislative solution is "Campaign to help people be more understanding, tolerant and welcoming to homosexuals." The latter improves society as a whole while they former may help in the short term but create risk-management tendencies among businesses along with resentment from non-protected classes.

Is this true? From my personal vantage point, young folks in the west don't seem to want change at all. They tend to support establishment politics. Even pop culture is full of artists promoting the establishment.

For example, consider John Stewart - he's somehow made a shtick of mocking the establishment while somehow calling for them to have more power and deligitimizing anyone who is outside the mainstream.

Insofar as young people want "change", it seems merely to be going back to mythical glorious past era when a single person could support a family, have "health care" and engage in real estate speculation via the proceeds of unskilled manual labor. They believe this "change" will happen mainly by funneling more money into existing programs and bringing back a few policies from the recent past.

(Admittedly, the tech world is an exception to this. And my vantage point might be skewed due to spending my US life in NY.)

What change do you believe the young want today?

I'm 23. Here's a few things I'd like to see progress on:

  Affordable education and access to high quality teachers.
  Bringing our healthcare cost/efficacy profile into line with other advanced economies.
  Repairing and rebuilding crumbling public infrastructure.
  Environmental reform, especially wrt carbon emissions & how we treat the oceans.
  Revisiting social security to ensure its long-term viability.
  Reducing the government's ability to invade privacy.
  Ending the "war on drugs" and regulating/taxing it like the alcohol or tobacco industry.

I'm happy to pay more taxes on my relatively small income if they go towards reforms in these areas. As ex-fed president Kocherlakota notes [1], exceedingly low interest rates and cheap labor are creating a great environment for gov investment. Unfortunately, fiscal policy is stuck in a quagmire due to deep-seated ideological divisions in Washington D.C.

[1] https://sites.google.com/site/kocherlakota009/home/policy/th...

Only the last two items on your list (protecting privacy, ending the war on drug users) remotely qualify as change. Everything else qualifies as "funneling more money into existing programs".

Consider the most establishment presidential candidate in the race right now. Would Hillary Clinton even use different words to describe her policy proposals?

I could imagine policy details that might count as change, but you don't seem to be advocating those. E.g., if you wanted to provide affordable education by replacing teachers with Khan Academy, or cut infrastructure costs down to everywhere-else-in-the-world levels [1] by breaking the back of public employee unions or other such reforms. Are you advocating big change like this?

[1] Delhi Metro Phase 2, 77 miles of track and 85 stations cost Delhi $2.9B and 3 years. Hudson Yards, 1 mile of track and 1 station, cost NYC $2.5B and 9 years.

> Unfortunately, fiscal policy is stuck in a quagmire due to deep-seated ideological divisions in Washington D.C.

I'm hoping Donald Trump helps to solve this (or rather, helps the GOP implode.). The Republican party has been an ideological mess for the better part of a decade, and that anti-intellectualism is coming back around to bite them in the ass. When men of substance spend all their time tearing each other down, why is it a surprise that a clown is the only one able to rise above the fray?

We've needed to hit the reset button on the Republican party since the mid-90s. We're finally getting a chance now that the GOP's corporate backers have so obviously lost control, so hopefully we'll be able to get back to normal within a decade or so.

From my vantage point in the US, it does seem like a significant number of young people do want change. I'm basing this on the contrast between Bernie Sanders supporters, largely young people, and Hillary Clinton supporters, who have a lot less young people than Bernie supporters. As for what change young people want today, I'd say it's what Bernie is campaigning for, which does include health care but also free college for all, among other things that primarily concern young people.

As I said, they believe this "change" will happen mainly by funneling more money into existing programs...

How do? Single payer is not a existing program today.

> Single payer is not a existing program today.

Sanders explicitly says that his "single payer" plan is "Medicare for all". Medicare is an existing program. It hasn't been a single-payer system for quite a long time, though; it has been -- longer than the ACA has been around -- a lot like a federalized, rather than state-based, version of the ACA with subsidized private plans but with a public default option.

Medicare for all is more of a sound bite.

A proper single payer system would not have Medicare broken down into part A,B etc. It would be end to end covering diagnosis, treatment, drugs etc.

Good points, but I would contend that "Older people have a lot more experience in observing human nature" is not necessarily always true. Or at least it may not be the reason for their conservativism.

It may also vary by location and culture, so I can only speak to my own experience with the place where I came from, where the elder population have acted as custodians for utterly retrograde policies and actively resist any attempt to move forward.

I'd question the wisdom of any generation who (broadly) thought the Magdalene Asylums were a good thing.

> "Older people have a lot more experience in observing human nature" is not necessarily always true. Or at least it may not be the reason for their conservativism.

Older people have a lot more experience observing politics and government, and as such have seen the consequences of historical campaign promises and highly-touted government agendas. If these consequences are negative and they have been given reason to believe that the government and its politicians are either liars or just not competent to deliver, that may explain their conservatism.

nice theory, but if you look at reality, biggest crooks in many places are kept in place by old folks voting for them again and again, just because they figured out and "tick their box", whatever insignificant thing it might be. random out of too many - Berlusconi anybody?

>Good points, but I would contend that "Older people have a lot more experience in observing human nature" is not necessarily always true.

While for particular older people it might not hold (e.g. some guy might be stuck in his house/bubble for all his life and have less life experience than a guy half his age) in general this is obviously true.

This is all true, but it goes both ways - older people tend to be more set in their ways, more obstinate and opposed to change for the sake of opposing it. On the whole, humans are feckless, short-sighted, narrow-minded creatures. We look to protect our own interests first and foremost above and beyond others, and for many people this only gets worse with age, when there is something to protect and guard against losing. I continue to be more underwhelmed by the older generation as I grow older.

I agree with the sentiment. Experience of elders has much more added value in stable, non-evolving society. What we see these days is opposite - rapid changes of all aspects fo our life. Many elders are simply lost in so many topics, and then tend to cling first familiar sign, however bad it is from overall perspective. This is dangerous since populist politicians easily use this and base their activities around these clear and easy targets. I think we all can see this happening all over the place

I'll take some proof with that. In the meantime, here in Denmark, as of 2014, only 9% of voters for the main populist, anti-immigration, anti-muslim party (and currently second biggest party) were under 30, with 43% over 60. If that's what wisdom looks like, it's scary.

Older people also don't want change simply because they're more stuck in their ways, and because they're afraid of change, afraid that it may risk whatever they have managed to build up during their life.

Science progresses one funeral at a time, that sort of thing.

I read a study that I am now searching for that showed MRI scans of people trying to change their mind about a subject. It consumed huge amounts of energy. People's brains are built to build an accurate, complete view of the survival landscape and forgo any wasted energy beyond that. Tolerence can be socialized in at a young age but changing your mind consumes huge amounts of resources better spent perpetuating survival. People obtain the same life milestones now, only on a protracted timeline. My thesis is that progress will be slower than before, for exactly as long as old/tired humans stick around.

I would LOVE a citation to read on that study you mention (or anything matching the description if no one knows the exact study)

Enough so I might actually pay for access to a journal in order to get it.

this would explain quite a big amount of arguments between people too

In terms of survival resources, it is way harder to change your mind than it is to fiercly dig in on an issue. No contest.

Deleted comment

Your parent specifically said that this was not about SS.

Right, I was reading it wrong. I'll delete my comment.

Wrong. It's only "disproportionate" because that cohort actually votes. The only reason that group has more power than any other group is that 20-29 year olds don't vote. People in their 60's do.

Voting is only a small part of the power equation. Money and influence is a much larger one.

Captains of business, finance, and education make a lot of important decisions and use money to influence the political process through lobbying and litigation. As corporations grow in power, gaining more rights and representation, so does this channel of political influence, which is controlled almost exclusively by an older cohort.

The article calls this out in detail: casino interests played a huge role in destroying Sydney's nightlife in order to funnel drinkers to the casino bars that were exempt from shutdown laws.

Notable exceptions would be Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Evan Spiegel. But they are just that: exceptions. And I wouldn't exactly consider any of them role models or champions for a younger generation.

Dont forget the power of the media! Newspapers, internet websites, public TV and radio stations. The they tell the "truth". The truth of the baby boomers.

I'm not sure the problem with the media is an age thing as much as a wealth thing. Wages for journalists are at rock bottom at the moment, and media publications are losing a fairly large amount of money due to the increased use of adblockers and competition from free internet sites. So the only people who can afford to become part of the established 'media' are the already well off types.

So the people who'd argue for change can't afford to live on the wages provided, leaving only the people with a decent amount of money in the bank (and who usually trend towards having more conservative or authoritarian views). It might also be why journalism isn't particularly diverse in terms of who works in the field (despite what some of them like arguing about), because non minority candidates tend to have the support networks to fall back on to continue working in the field.

If there's a predominance of older people at the higher levels in the media world on the other hand, I suspect it's because getting rich in this industry was a lot easier before the internet was a big thing. Most of these people started when anyone wanting visibility had to go through the old media gatekeepers...

I haven't checked on this, but I would wager that a rather disproportionate number of 20-29 year olds would find it much more difficult to vote than people in their 60s. Sure, it's probably possible to register in advance and get a mail-in ballot, but that is rarely done and I expect there's some hoops to jump through there. As far as actually going to the polls, young folk tend to work jobs that make that very difficult, if not quite impossible. If you are living paycheck to paycheck, and your job doesn't afford you paid days off, and you're scheduled to work that day, then you're just going to work and not vote. Anything else would set you back in a way that would be more immediately damaging than not getting your vote. And even if you could afford to take an unpaid day off, in spite of it being illegal to prevent someone from taking time off to vote, I expect it would put most people in the bad graces of their employers to exercise that right. And it's hard to prove that your rights have been violated when you get fired for being 'unreliable' or just get scheduled for fewer hours the next several weeks because 'that's just how the schedule worked out'. These employers aren't trying to disenfranchise the young, they're just acting in their own best interests by maintaining control and keeping people working, and the current job market gives them far too much leverage. And that's not even getting into people with kids.

Compare this to 60+, who are probably often retired or semi-retired, or working a job at a higher level where they've earned some form of paid time off, or are financially stable enough to just take the day off without pay, etc. They have no kids at home to take care of. They can much more easily just head over to the polls that day, without having to make extensive arrangements in advance.

*And no, this isn't universal, just general trends. Yes, some young folk have professional positions with paid time off, some don't work. Likewise, some older folk are stuck working crappy low end jobs to make ends meet. But when we're talking percentages, I'm rather confident that the older generation is more likely to be able to go out and vote on one particular day in November.

Most countries hold their elections on weekends to avoid that problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_day).

And again, the young are more likely to be working in retail or hospitality where they work on weekends, not full-time monday to friday office jobs.

Where I live the election booths open before retail trading hours begin, from memory, a full two hours before the bulk of retailers open. And voting takes like ~15 minutes at the worst of times, so even these have the opportunity to vote on the day.

Oregon's mail ballots are great and completely solve this issue. I was going to say that I wasn't sure they made a huge difference, and I really don't know but the data should be out there somewhere, but looking for some data I noticed that Washington state and Colorado are the two other states that currently do vote by mail. And those three states do have something else in common that suggest you could possibly be on to something...

"If voting mattered, they wouldn't let you do it".

Honestly, voting gets more credit than it deserves. I don't think it's 100% corrupt at the booths, but the candidates that are allowed to compete are vetted by the elites.

Interestingly enough, both Sanders and Trump have snubbed the major political systems, but neither of them are really that much of a threat to the establishment.

Those that are truly feared (e.g. MLK Jr, Malcolm X, perhaps JFK) are not 'allowed' to take part in the game.

>Wrong. It's only "disproportionate" because that cohort actually votes. The only reason that group has more power than any other group is that 20-29 year olds don't vote. People in their 60's do.

Wrong too, I'm afraid. In lots of Western countries the average age of the population has rose as high as 40 year old (in contrast with older values of even less than 30). So it's not always that 'young people don't vote', it's also there are less of them too.

It's still not disproportionate. Old people don't get more votes. They actually vote.

Just because there happen to be more old people, and they tend to vote more conservatively, does not mean that it's "disproportionate" when they actually vote and influence policy. If all the baby boomers died tomorrow nobody would bemoan the disproportionate influence of 40-year olds in the next election.

>It's still not disproportionate. Old people don't get more votes.

I'm afraid you have misread disproportionate to mean some kind of unfair representation.

It just means "they are more, and thus get more votes", i.e. that their influence (because of their numbers) is higher. Nobody implied they get more than 1 vote per person...

disproportionate: "too large or too small in comparison with something else"

"They are more, and thus get more votes" that is _proportional_ voting. x% of the people have x% of the vote.

Disproportionate means they get _more_ than you would already expect from proportional representation.

Nope, it also means that they have much more votes in comparison to young voters.

It's not about cheating or "proportional representation". It could mean that too, if we were discussing voting systems, but we are not.

We're discussing the fair share of the vote each group gets -- and how the total of young votes vs old votes are out of proportion, that is imbalanced.

disproportionate: "too large or too small in comparison with something else" (dictionary)

But their representation is not too large. It's exactly the size it should be - one vote for one person.

"Too" means excessively. Boomer representation is only "too large" if you happen to disagree with their policy choices (which I usually do) - but it's not an unfair level of representation or influence, which is what disproportionate does mean in this context.

>But their representation is not too large. It's exactly the size it should be - one vote for one person.

Consider a country with 10,100 people, where 100 baby boomers voted and only 1 younger person bothered to vote but the general demographics are the inverse ratio (10,000 young people, 100 baby boomers).

The exact word to use for the baby boomers voting influence there would be "disproportionate".

That's literally what the word means -- it's not tied to the voting system, or stealing votes.

It's disproportionate not because they got more votes than it's fair to according to the voting system, or because they don't deserve those votes, but because they got more votes than what would be the ideal proportional representation of the two demographic groups.

(E.g. where young/old is as close to votes_of_young/votes_of_old as a ratio).

The two groups have the same capacity/opportunity to get proportional representation (in the voting system), but they don't have actual proportional representation (in the voting results).

and that is a reason to blame "old" people for what exactly? Because young are lazy to vote ? Only if you go by extension that I intentionally raised my kids to not to vote as a part of my evil plan for dominance over young. sheesh

>and that is a reason to blame "old" people for what exactly? Because young are lazy to vote ?

Who said that that, in itself, is reason to blame anybody?

It's just an empirical, quantifiable, observation.

That said, there are many OTHER, valid, reasons to blame "old" people, or the baby boomer generation, and lots of them have been laid out in the comment section.

>Only if you go by extension that I intentionally raised my kids to not to vote as a part of my evil plan for dominance over young. sheesh

Well, I don't think anybody brought this conspiracy shit up, or even implied it. Just that:

a) older people are over-representent at elections,

b) thus they exert the most political influence

c) most politicians elected are crap

d) that these get elected is predominantly the fault of older people

One might argue that younger people are also to blame for not participating as much in elections, but that's probably not as bad as actively voting for and supporting crap.

They are voting to enslave the young via debt. Democracy isn't supposed to be mob rule.

Curiously I read a Bernie piece that condemns Baby Boomers for wanting a Balanced Budget. Apparently that is a swear word now? So which is it - drowning in debt, or starved by a balanced budget.

It's land value tax which will pull the false gains from the boomers and give value to the labour of the young again.

I'm not really very interested in Sanders except that he is clearly a response by a frustrated youth.

This line of reasoning is barely even worth a response.

We notice the same thing in Belgium however, where voting is mandatory. Younger generations tend to vote for far more progressive parties, while the older generations stick with conservative parties.

I was arguing against the use of the word "disproportionate" which implies unfair.

I don't think it's at all strange that younger people tend to be more progressive, regardless of party.

how is disproportional in a voting system where each adult has a vote? I would say it is proportional it is just that you don't like a proportion right now because people live longer so there is more older adults voting

It's disproportional in the sense of who's contributing to society (working) versus who's deciding what to do (voting).

I am pretty sure that currently taxes paid by baby boomers (51+ age) outweigh taxes paid by millennials. And taxes are contributing to a majority (all?) of public services. Things look even worse for a millennials if you add my generation (gen X). That would include population 40+ which arguably is at a peek of earnings.

I am not sure which contribution you are measure so I used a simple money based one. I would "love" to have vote proportional to taxes I pay (kidding ..)

Don't fall for the same tricks that the establishment uses. Yes of course the wealthy pay more in absolute taxes than the rest of us plebs. That's because they HAVE so much more. My parents lived at a time where their savings earned 10% at the local bank. The stock market did better. Houses were 3x one earner's median wage. University could be paid for via a summer job.

So of course they're paying a lot more in taxes as most younger people have negative wealth. But the older are paying 15%-25% on capital gains and dividends, while the young are paying 30% on income.

The old are living off of huge pensions and medical insurance being paid for RIGHT NOW by income from the young. They did not save it. That is why most localities are pretty much kicking the debt can down the road: increasing things like property taxes, fines (e.g. speeding tickets), toll roads, etc. all the while providing less services.

The vast majority of the federal budget is not Planned Parenthood, the EPA, or road costs. It is the military, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the vast majority of which benefit the old. Even the military is more about keeping the US system propped up instead of ensuring our 'safety'. Two large oceans have always been more than enough.

This narrative doesn't ring true for me. The young are unemployed and poor. They are simultaneously paying for the old. With what?

Our economy is becoming more automated and efficient with every invention. Its that economy that supports us all. Not on the backs of the (unemployable) young.

We used to dream about a future where robots did all the work. The closer we get to that, the more folks lash out in confusion.

Surely things are not equitable. That needs to be addressed. But old solutions of tax and make-work are all misdirected. This is a different world.

for a start world is a bigger than old USofA so there are countries which use a tax dollars for a different purpose.

30% of young people income is still way less than 15-25% on capital gains and for sure you don't think that majority of people 40+ are living of dividends. Majority still works and is paying more taxes than that young person. The way you explaining just does not add up

> I am pretty sure that currently taxes paid by baby boomers (51+ age) outweigh taxes paid by millennials.

How about in 10 years, when they stop working and retire?

then you will have same conversation with my generation (X) and after another 10 some other generation will have same conversation with millennials :-)

This isn't the first time I've read this idea of only allowing taxpayers to vote be floated by someone on the left.

There's been a weird number of things like this that I've seen bubbling up, like extreme anti-union rhetoric in regards the police. It's usually in reaction to a specific issue, but it's still weird to see.

You don't get to dismiss a valid idea by denoucing it as "leftist". IMO, the protections against the majority oppressing the minority is just as important for democracy as everybody having exactly one vote.

Obviously, 51% of the population voting to enslave the "other" 49% would be completely unfair and IMO un-democratic (even if it was enacted by democratic means). We could argue about how much each subsection of the society should contribute (or get) for the world to be "fair", but honestly, I'm not even that concerned about that; what I'm concerned is the trend (of older people increasing in numbers (power to enact benefits for themselves by taxing others) but decreasing in productivity (contributions)). If that trend continues making the benefits/contributions disproportionate, at some point it's bound to become unsustainable and the system will collapse.

I didn't dismiss anything. I was remarking that it's unusual to see "only taxpayers should be allowed to vote" coming from someone on the left.

to add another data point I am currently paying a bills for a two millennials so you should understand my skepticism about contributions of millennials :-)

I'm not sure why you're singling out millenials... There are other sections of the population (between 30 and 50) that are probably very productive but slowly loosing the power compared to 50+.

I really don't see me losing anything to any generation (older or younger) but I also don't have feeling of entitlement. It is "normal" to blame everything else for one's perceived misfortune/lack of opportunity but in most cases it is yourself. I don't prevent young people to vote for any type of change they want but if voting doesn't go your way it is not really fair to complain about it.

I don't care much about "fairness" and complaining, I'm more interested (and concerned) about incentives. If people see there's no way for them to succeed, they won't even try. They'll check out of the society and stop being productive ("herbivore men" (Japan) or "the beautiful ones" (mouse experiment)). The problem is systematic, of course, but if disproportionately affects the young, which in average have much less capital and thus rely much more on their (present and future) work income.

IMO, this is one of the reasons that people are into at least talking about Bernie Sanders style socialism.

If these fundamental injustices don't get addressed, I fear the alternative is revolution in the long term.

> IMO, this is one of the reasons that people are into at least talking about Bernie Sanders style socialism.

Yeah but that doesn't make it right. Look at the lashback from the right against Immigration and the rise of Donald Trump. It has been hard for everyone, and human nature is to find individuals or groups to blame.

I am an advocate of sanity on both ends. The left loves to talk about 'revolution' (as if right wing doesn't love to do that, except it calls it 'secession' and 'nullification') but the harsh truth is, we are about a million miles away from a revolution/secession/nullification.

A revolution against the 'injustice' won't move 2 blocks from Times Square before it goes so violent that it would be an effective stalemate.

There are far too many private guns in America for there to be a successful revolution. Civil War is more likely (lets not forget this is what really happened in China and Russia).

Similarly a secession/nullification isn't happening irrespective of how many illegal immigrants arrive in this country (again thanks 2nd amendment for that).

The principles true for the rest of the world just aren't that easily possible for America. There is no extreme right wing or left wing party winning election (Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are hardly the American Golden Dawn, UKIP or Hollande of America). American citizenry is heavily armed and hate speech is legal. Neo-nazis can freely march in America (that surprisingly neuters the power these groups have).

There's only so many demographics that you can alienate.

It's a golden age on the coasts, but many areas of the country have been spiraling downward for decades. If you're a working stiff with negative wage growth essentially working as servants for boomers with fat pensions and reverse mortgages, you're going to get more and more resentful. That's why a demogague like Trump is successful.

If you don't think Trump is extreme right wing, you haven't been paying attention.

Trump isn't, but his supporters are.

Trump says all the things his supporters want to hear.

"The problem is Muslims and Mexicans. We should deport them and build walls. We should obliterate their countries and take their oil. Torture is fine. We should kill the families of terrorists. Shooting Muslims with bullets dipped in pigs blood is a good way to teach them a lesson. The president should be able to directly punish CEOs who aren't protectionist enough. The freedom of the press should be curtailed. It's ok to use violence to punish non-supporters at your rallies."

If that's not extreme right wing, I'm not sure what is.

Wait, there is some sort of confusion here. Trump is leading an very right wing movement, just like Sanders is leading a very left wing movement(by American standards). I don't know why you said in the earlier post "If you don't think Trump is extreme right wing", because I never said any such thing.

So what did you mean by: "Trump isn't, but his supporters are."?

I'm sorry to say that but there is no real injustices in western countries. Everybody has food, education, a minimal healthcare and even luxury products like smartphone or TV.

It's very different in Africa where life expectancy is near 45:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...

A lot of problems in western countries comes from the society itself (how the society is organized and how it works) and most of them can't be solved with laws.

I really dislike this line of thought. It reduces to: until living standards are as bad as Africa, don't complain.

A recipe for getting living standards as bad as Africa.

Sounds like "Uncomfortable with privilege". I think that was the point of the comment - to make first world folks aware that their problems are first-world problems.

In the big picture, maybe it doesn't matter exactly how comfortable 5% of the world is. Maybe the real issue is how bad things are in Africa. If people really all matter?

No this is a false choice. We can fight for equality at home and for better living standards abroad.

The boomers are behaving disgustingly by ramping land prices in hock with the banks. It has sent living standards into free-fall for the young.

> The boomers are behaving disgustingly by ramping land prices in hock with the banks. It has sent living standards into free-fall for the young.

It's not them. You would do the same if you had properties and kids.

Realestate is a market. It's inside the money.

Some regimes tried to change that by force but it doesn't work. Even if you kill all the richs, they are replaced by another group (lawyers or bureaucrats):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution

I think it's not a fatality. It's just a lack of knowledge. We don't know enough of human group behaviour.

No I wouldn't because I'm not a scumbag. I understand the system, I have funds to participate yet I do not. I will also vote for a brighter tomorrow by trying to support land value tax. Boomers want "me me me" in the main.

It's not a problem of Will.

If you think that, you might become a victim of "bad" people. Most people are not bad and do what they can. Even the wealthy do their best. Most of them have a family or friends to take care.

Vote is useless. Big changes happens even during economic crisis or after wars.

I guess its the free market that 'disgusting'? Confused. Economic systems work a certain way. Demonizing a group that participates like everybody else is a curious notion. And probably not a route to a solution.

I always find it a curious approach, taken by so many activists, to start by disaffecting the group that they claim is in power. How can it help to piss of and blame the actual people than are in a position to help?

Housing is a free market? The mortgage interest deduction alone is the third largest tax break overall, costing $100 billion per year. Similarly, zoning regulations are rampant, preventing new housing from being built and therefore keeping house values higher for existing homeowners.

Calling the US housing market "free" is a sad joke.

Huh. They're building a lot of housing around here, like a carpet spreading over the land. Nobody who wants a house has to go without.

Maybe we're talking apples and oranges. City centers and highly urbanized areas will work very differently. But is it a civil right to have cheap housing downtown?

We have a system that ensures all our surplus labour after essentials will be taken up by rent.

The banks provide credit as required. It costs nothing to make. As productivity increases (or as we work longer) more credit is created to absorb the surplus via interest.

It's not a free market - you are confused.

fallacy of relative privation

or to reframe your argument:

Maybe it doesnt matter how mysoginistic the US is, maybe the real issue is how bad things are in the middle east.

Does that sound like something you agree with? we should cease all effort to improve conditions for women in the US because all of that effort should instead be expended on improving conditions for women in the middle east?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies#Red_herring_...

That's not the fallacy of relative privation. The F.R.P. addresses arguments that appeal to unrelated problems elsewhere in the world. It's a fallacy because it's illogical: it doesn't matter that kids are starving in Japan, because nothing you do with your raisin bran is going to change that. But it does not follow that local problems are more, or even equally, deserving of attention that foreign ones.

Maybe you have a solidly different understanding of that fallacy, but that lines up 100% from where i'm sitting.

I'll even reword it into the right semantic order:

"The US may have some minor societal issues, but its not as bad as africa, therefore those issues can be dismissed"

What exactly is logical about claiming every problem in the US is able to be dismissed on the basis that its worse elsewhere - especially given that we are in a discussion about internal US demographics? How exactly is africa related to the growing proportion of elderly voters in the united states and the effects that has on youth populations?

There is a difference between an argument that you disagree with and an argument that is fallacious. If a problem exists in a minor form in the US and in a gigantic form elsewhere, it may indeed be worthwhile to direct attention to the gigantic problem rather than the minor one. As well, it may not be. The argument is colorable. You can't dispel it by invoking some element of a list of fallacies.

Your argument is a pretty good illustration of the problem I have with these catalogues of fallacies. You've discovered the fallacy of relative privation, as others have discovered, say, ad hominem, and concluded that relative privation is a fallacy. No, that's not the point! As with ad hominem, it can be used fallaciously, but it is not inherently so.

logical fallacy:

>A logical fallacy is an error in the logic of an argument that prevents it from being logically valid but does not prevent it from swaying people's minds

Can you show me the logic of the argument in a manner that makes sense?

heres what i see:

1. elderly population is becoming ever larger part of electorate

2. this is causing an imbalance, as in the past new generations began influencing the political sphere earlier, as the older generations were much thinner

3. this imbalance is evidenced by political support for a youth focused populist candidate

(heres where maybe im missing something)

4. this imbalance doesnt exist because its not as bad as africa.

To me, its a straight up non sequitur let alone a FRP - on its face fallacious in more ways than one.

On one hand we have a discussion about internal demographics in the US, and then here we have a counter argument proposing that the problems are not real based on the fact that someone has it worse.

This isnt an argument i disagree with - I am not somehow implying that the US has it worse than africa. I am purely saying that bringing africa into a discussion about internal demographics and specifically age demographics of voters, is fallacious (i mean the commentor literally responded to political unrest of a population segment with 'at least there is no one starving'). Hopefully you can present the argument in a way that clarifys what i may be missing.

The context of this thread is the idea that support for Bernie Sanders stems in part from the fact that if the injustices he talks about aren't addressed, there might be an armed revolution in the US.

You are free to believe that's the case, but you cannot invoke the fallacy of relative privation to transform it into an open-and-shut argument.

I'm not doing anything to improve this thread at this point, so I'm bowing out now.

>The context of this thread is the idea that support for Bernie Sanders stems in part from the fact that if the injustices he talks about aren't addressed, there might be an armed revolution in the US.

Ok, then is this an argument for or against that idea?

>I'm sorry to say that but there is no real injustices in western countries. Everybody has food, education, a minimal healthcare and even luxury products like smartphone or TV.

It sounds to me like they are:

>dismissing a complaint due to the existence of more important problems in the world, regardless of whether those problems bear relevance to the original argument.

But sure, maybe its a real argument. Maybe campaign finance reform in the US doesnt exist as an issue, because when i go home i know theres still food in the cupboard.

Maybe because i can go to an emergency room if i get shot and they'll care for me before knowing if i have insurance, that means that black people getting murdered by police officers isn't an injustice.

Maybe given that i have a smartphone, ever rising costs of engaging in a legal battle dont favor the wealthy, and that doesnt represent a legal system based on economics rather than justice

Maybe since my country has a public education system and i was able to learn to read and write, that means that my country doesnt criminalize the mentally ill.

And since someone in africa doesnt have those advantages, any injustice they face is real.

I honestly cant see a way to read these comments that dont fit the exact definition of relative privation. Are you saying that the other commentor was saying that campaign finance reform is not an issue because campaign finance reform is needed even more greatly in africa? Or as you saying they meant an armed revolution is not possible in the US given that countries worse off are not engaged in armed revolution currently? Those are the most generous reads of the comment i've been able to come up with. I appreciate the discussion, have a good one

Step 4 is made up whole cloth - not actually present in any of the above text. That argument form has got to be in that list too, right?

The innocent tangent was "maybe this all seems a little overblown to people that have it worse". Which is undeniably true, as at least some of them actually said that.

>Step 4 is made up whole cloth

>4. this imbalance doesnt exist because its not as bad as africa.

> I'm sorry to say that but there is no real injustices in western countries

How you got from "there are no injustices in the western world" to "maybe this is a little overblown" im not sure i understand.

I would say, it is hypocritical to worry about one's own cell phone bill to the exclusion of being concerned about other's real privation. I just caution: don't take yourself too seriously.

The real issues to those living in the first-world, are and should be those which affect their everyday lives and the societies that will determine their future.

I'm sorry to say that Africa doesn't really factor into all that. Peace, love and understanding for the entire planet sounds great but I have work to do and bills to pay.

These sort of "reduce everything into rubble by equalizing" arguments provide nothing to the discussion but wishful thinking and meaningless utopianism.

> The real issues to those living in the first-world, are and should be those which affect their everyday lives and the societies that will determine their future.

They can't change that. They had no writing. History of Africa begins with XIVth century.

Our culture comes from the Greeks, Roman Empire and India. Even in the Middle Ages, the western technology was superior.

> History of Africa begins with XIVth century.

This is certainly one opinion, however on the other hand, we have actual reality.

So many agree with that. See the movie 'Zardoz' for a dystopian future taken from that premise.

I like a lot the Big Flying and Talking Head :-)

It was to say that we can't really solve the problems with politics. What we can expect from political movements is something already done or tried. It's about taxes or laws.

People have the right to complain but they don't understand where the problems come from. They are often manipulate by parties to win the elections and nothing changes.

Most of the defects we can see in westerns countries come from the way we are organized (with hierarchy, money and laws).

African societies are more horizontal and people share more (the food for example). There is no homeless in most african cities (some in big ones).

>Everybody has food

USDA says that 14% of all households in the united states suffer from food insecurity.[1]

>no real injustices in western countries

institutional racism, police killings, homelessness, drug addiction, political oligarchy, rapidly rising secondary education costs, etc.

These problems dont vanish because someone else has it worse, that's a well known fallacy called the fallacy of relative privation[2]

[1] http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/foo... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies#Red_herring_...

> institutional racism, police killings, homelessness, drug addiction, political oligarchy, rapidly rising secondary education costs, etc.

There is no effective solution to any of these problems. Nothing works.

They are consequences of the money. We use money because we do not understand each other. Money is far more than a commodity. It has its own live and rules.

What is possible is to do small tunings with taxes and laws. That's all.

If you take big revolutionnary measures, you will destabilize the money system and everything will be broken like in 1929.

Another approach is real anarchist communism but it doesn't scale. It works only locally. That's why some libertarians are for feodalism.

Awesome. All of our problems are solved. Thanks for letting us know!

"Verbal, dramatic, and situational irony are often used for emphasis in the assertion of a truth. The ironic form of simile, used in sarcasm, and some forms of litotes can emphasize one's meaning by the deliberate use of language which states the opposite of the truth, denies the contrary of the truth, or drastically and obviously understates a factual connection."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony

You're right that old people have always held power. The difference now is that 'old' people are not the 45 year olds of previous generations. Instead, wealth is disproportionately concentrated in the hands of much older - 60's through 80's, thanks to modern medicine.

This tends to push back the timeline of wealth acquisition: the boomers being such a big demographic along with the economic crisis in 2008, and what I see in my highly progressive US city is a massive failure for late Gen X and older millenials to form households: children, mortgages, and the typical consumption patterns this usually breeds.

There are advertisements for IVF treatments on our metro. I'd say 30-40% of educated women are unable or unwilling to have children due to the inability to find a stable partner (who's also educated). I make well over 6 figures and my girlfriend also does pretty well. Together, we'd still need to pay half our joint salary to afford a mortgage on a typical home in a area close to our jobs. There is no way a couple with the median income could do the same without leveraging a huge amount of debt relative to income.

Whether I'm able to do so or not, I'm defintely not willing. Jobs are not certain - I'm always waiting for the next crisis or recession and lay off. No way in hell would I want to be in so much debt in this system. Same for children (along with family court, but I digress).

I'm guessing our politicians see this and understand that the whole pyramid will come crashing down, hence the elite's push for more and more immigration.

Maybe the solution would be, instead of subsidizing foreigners, to create massive tax breaks for locals to procreate - housing, child care, etc. But that wouldn't do anything to push down wages, so it's obviously a no-go in today's political debate.

> Millenials will experience a lost generation and things won't start to look good until we're well into middle-age.

At least Millenials have better numbers than Gen X. Nobody even mentions us anymore..

"Millenials will experience a lost generation and things won't start to look good until we're well into middle-age."

Reading between the lines you're a millenial (if so, sorry) and "they" are trying to manipulate you by claiming if you wait a decade or two, things will be better, just warning you they pulled that trick on us X-ers. I would not be pacified by the same old line. At least make them tell you a new lie.

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