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Comment by wheremind | Hacker News Reader

It seems like this came to a head around the time of the occupy wall street protests (is it 10 years ago now?). The public consciousness became aware of the way our political/financial systems were in a kind of symbiotic conspiracy to vacuum up productivity gains, there was huge pressure to do something about it despite the media's constant stream of 'nothing to see here'..... and then nothing happened. The popular culture of the west instead decended into this en masse flame war around gender, race, sexuality etc.

Seems like there was a huge opportunity that was foiled or just missed and this is possibly going to be the result of it.

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The more we fight each other the less we are fighting "them".

Yes, it seems like classic divide and conquer strategy but I have no evidence for it. the idea has been kind of obsessing me a bit recently, I'd love to see someone that has actually looked into it and tried to compile a bit of data.

This is a very old thought. Both LBJ and MLK understood this, at least in the context of racism as a tool to divide the lower and middle classes of society. You've probably heard this quote, attributed to LBJ:

> If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.

I know, I'm wondering whether anyone's looked into it in the context of the occupy wall street movement. The popular consciousness was so strongly diverted at the point it began to threaten elite interests that it's at least noteworthy, yet I've never really seen it talked about much.

It may just be an artifact of the rise of social media, although I'm not sure that the timelines really match up very well. I just want to see if anyone's really looked into it because I don't even know where to start with something like that, but it's been playing on my mind for a few months now.

I went to a few of the protests to watch, not really take part. It seemed to me that they had a crazy flat purely democratic structure (or unstructure :P). So much in fact that they couldn't decide on what to focus on or how to move forward.

A lot of them also seemed to not understand how our financial system works.

Yeah, I agree about the street protests themselves were pretty dysfunctional, that wasn't really what I was talking about. The protests were really only the tip of the iceberg at the time. There seemed to be a much wider focus on the gaming of systems and regulatory capture (mostly) by a financial industry that pretty much seemed to be just a state protected tool for money farmers.

The typical HN reader is firmly entrenched in the establishment or wishes they were. What does a developer making $200k stand to gain by demanding economic justice?

the intelligentsia was the first to go during the red revolution.

A populous that won't come after them with pitchforks.

The tricky part is there is no "them" to fight. "Them" is just another "Us". And "we" are responsible for the way things are (albeit to lesser degree perhaps) the same as bank presidents and congressional representatives and CEOs of large corporations.

My feeling is we can't lay the problems of the modern world at the feet of individuals. There isn't a shadowy cabal intent on keep the little people down. It's just people and groups struggling for power and resources with varying degrees of a success. That's not to say there aren't collusions and conspiracies and bad doings by people with power, there most certainly are, but the fact these succeed are problems of a system. Because people are people are people and the new boss is same as the old boss and 4 legs good 2 legs better and all that jazz.

What is needed are some systemic updates. And these will happen inevitably I think.

Just to expand a bit on the above, look at currently top rated poster with 100K in student loans. I think it's somewhat axiomatic this out of balance and most people would consider it "wrong" and "abusive". So who is to blame? The bankers? Well, ya, partially. The government who let it get like this and didn't make funding education a priority? Yep, as well. School administrators who keep adding on layer after layer of useless non-productive bureaucracy driving up costs to astronomical levels? Yep, them too. How about companies that insist someone sit in classes like literature for at least a couple of years before they can push buttons on a machine? Yep. How about people who try to fake their way into jobs they can't do necessitating the previous? well, yep, them too. How about a guy who wants to "get on with the university" so he can have good benefits and a pension after 20 or 30 years? he's partially to blame as well.

Point is, we can't just blame bankers and politicians and corporations and call it a day. Our activity, almost to the person is responsible for the horrible outcomes. We all are trying to get a little piece of the pie and the sum total in this system is producing undesirable side effects. Housing is another prime example. It's ridiculous. Way out of wack. Unless you bought a house 30 years ago then what a great way to save for retirement and housing appreciating is fantastic!

I really think we need to back up and address some fundamentals. Housing, healthcare and education being big ones. These aren't a place for speculation and self serving bureaucracy. They are necessities of life and an advancing society. So we need to change some things about how these are run. But that means some people will no longer be able to victimize others and will lose out. But it's not all just bankers and CEOs. It's a lot of little sucker fish attached to the ecosystem as well. So it's not as easy as just getting out the guillotine which is all too common of a reaction.

> That's not to say there aren't collusions and conspiracies and bad doings by people with power, there most certainly are, but the fact these succeed are problems of a system

You are describing a "cabal intent on keeping the little people down". The cabal works by taking steps to perpetuate systemic inequality forward.

The people involved are extremely well positioned and connected, have ridiculous amounts of material resources to call upon, and are extremely highly incentivized to keep these systemic flaws around. Thus, there is no reason to believe that systemic updates will inevitably happen.

There are lot of people incentivized to keep things one way or the other. They aren't all big people. Presumably no one wants to see the system crash. But if each person can cheat just a little, well, it's everyone else's fault in their minds.

The power elite conspiracy model in my mind is too simple and doesn't fully explain the phenomenon. Because instability isn't good for anyone so I belive it's much more complex and systemic rather than a planned conspiracy of a group of individuals.

Systemic change is inevitable I think. Sometimes it involves a hard reboot or re-install though and no one in their right mind wants that. So maybe some things in the system can be fixed to restore balance.

But first we need an accurate model of what is going on, and as loathsome as bankers and insurance CEOs might be, this isn't all their doing and they aren't the only ones preventing the fix.

I have a friend who's a bit conspiracy minded. He thinks the powers that be responded to Occupy by simultaneously pushing far-left and far-right identity politics to split everyone into tiny warring factions.

I'm skeptical but regardless of whether it was intentional or just happened that does in fact seem to be what happened.

The culture war must die. Then after it's dead it must be burned, ground into fine powder, mixed with concrete, and dropped into a deep region of the ocean near a subduction zone.

Unfortunately that means everyone and I mean everyone who is culture-warring must give up and walk away. That means no more social justice warrior-ing and no more Pepe memes and alt-right tiki torch bullshit either. That means ignoring Jordan Peterson and Sam Seder. That means screw religion and atheism. That means screw the left and the right. That means... well... it kind of means everyone simultaneously loses whatever culture war they're fighting... or simultaneously wins... but you have to not care so much you don't even care about that.

I don't know. Maybe it can happen. Try this. Every time you're tempted to get mad about the "alt-right" or alternately "cultural Marxism" just stare at this graph and ask "who benefits from me worrying about this crap?"

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-imlQvrT-aFM/Ve9yY1CAV9I/AAAAAAAAM...

I will say this. As long as we are split over issues like race, gender, religion, and cultural totems the longer that graph will diverge.

> masse flame war around gender, race, sexuality etc.

I don't think its a flame war as much as a reckoning. Its like saying the Civil Rights movement was a flame war; that is how deep changes happen in a society and culture.

Specifically w.r.t the #MeToo movement, I think women demanding more compensation and better workplace environment ends up benefiting everyone (even if the movement's primary concern is with other things).

If there is one thing this horrible Presidency has accomplished, it is more political participation among Americans; a recognition of the importance of politics and of voting. That perhaps is the greatest opportunity in this generation.

Totally agree that this is how deep, necessary changes happen on the cultural level. I think the political task of our generation is to integrate these issues into the wider economic ones, because they are by no means mutually exclusive (whatever mass media would have us believe).

I'm always a little baffled when the struggle for economic equality gets pitted against anti-racist or feminist movements.

It is quite clear from history that racism has been employed as a tool to keep the affluent classes in power. Slavery is the most extreme example of the rich extracting wealth from their workers, but in modern times and it is also a useful wedge split the working class.

Similarly, it seems relatively easy to recognize that unequal pay and mistreatment of women suppresses the labor cost of half of the workforce.

There are obviously complex dynamics at play on both fronts, but power and wealth are being inextricable, it seems necessary to build a political movement that addresses exploitation across a range of inequalities, including economic, racial, gender, sexuality, etc.

The turnout in Democratic primaries (where one would assume a reaction to the Presidency would have the most effect) has been pretty disappointing so far. For example Texas has traditionally had a low turnout no matter what - young people could not be bothered to vote. https://www.texastribune.org/2018/05/18/analysis-millennial-...

The primary in Alabama between a pedophile and a normal person for US Senate was ridiculously close, and it was only super high turnout by African Americans that turned the tide, not young people.

But those things were happening before the occupy stuff.

I'm not saying there was never any problem with racism or anything, or that it's been invented just to create a diversion. I'm saying that the movements that existed before occupy around racism, sexism etc. instead of being about working for womens/minority rights suddenly became imbued with "fuck white male patriarchy".

During/after occupy they suddenly took this populist left turn into stoking resentment and ingroup/outgroup identification along race and gender lines. Obviously that stuff was always there but it suddenly blew up into the mainstream narrative and pushed everyone into taking a side.

There was a point in the occupy thing where "the one percent" morphed into "white males" and the narrative flipped from criticising the financial/political system, which was totally indefensible, into this flame war where working class white guys who thought they were the ones getting a raw deal are suddenly being portrayed as the bad guys by people who are basically spokespeople for the elite class- celebrities, university professors, politicians etc.. and those working class guys are all so surprised and pissed off by that they go and vote for Trump as a big fuck you to the source of the perceived betrayal, that's my take on it anyway.

That is the part of it that smells like a diversion, and now everyone is so heavily invested on either side of the culture war that there's almost no hope of them meeting again, at least for a good while and it's pretty much business as usual for the elites who are completely out of the spotlight again.

The problem is that these issues are so emotional they completely sideline any discussion of economic well being or economic issues in general. As long as they dominate attention other issues just don't come up.

"issues" like disproportionate incarceration for minorities, sexual harassment for women, you mean? They may not be directly economic at first but building a society that is more just and equal is certainly the easiest path to increasing prosperity and well being.

I wish we could address both at once but recent history seems to suggest that we can't. I think the problem is with how these issues interact with other issues when projected down onto the demographics of the voting population.

The problem is that these issue cross-cut each other in almost exactly an X pattern. The majority of the working class is socially conservative, traditional, and religious, so any culture war issue tends to be a fault line that neatly divides the voting bloc that would otherwise care about economic equality.

I would like us to have racial and gender equality but unfortunately it might mean we get to all be equal and poor.

> there was a huge opportunity that was foiled or just missed

2016 voter turnout amongst millennials was 49% versus 61% for the population [1]. It's not surprising that old-guard industries are being subsidized and Social Security and Medicare expanded while education subsidies and entry-level public sector job openings fall.

[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/31/millennials-...

> and then nothing happened

Newsroom series had a nice description for that. There was a disorganised mass of people with a very vague idea of who they wanted to change and why. With no clear goals, no actual representative from the other side that is held responsible for progress, etc. nothing could really happen. (Unless it turned into actual uprising)

> there was huge pressure to do something about it despite the media's constant stream of 'nothing to see here'..... and then nothing happened.

That seems to be the case with pretty much every major issue we're facing right now. The student loan bubble, the Republican tax cut and repeal of Wall Street regulations, global warming, education, the decimation of the nation's worldwide standing, the obesity crisis ...

Collectively, we have no attention span. We get scared about something, then think to ourselves "well, somebody has always solved the big problems in the past. I'm sure somebody will solve this one, too," and go back to voting for someone on The Voice instead of someone in the Senate.

>The popular culture of the west instead decended into this en masse flame war around gender, race, sexuality etc.

That was the whole impetus behind the adoption of "identity politics" by a corrupt Democratic party establishment who had completely sold out their traditional base of working people to Wall Street. Their continued push to make society's problems all about "identity" instead of economic inequality (You can still hear the cries of "race not class!") was a strategy deliberately employed by the scions of the Democratic party firmly entrenched in the ruling class. Have no doubt that they are out in the Hamptons right now, rubbing shoulders with billionares and oligarchs crying about racism and 54 genders while countless millions of Americans are mired in poverty, and hundreds of millions more are one medical emergency or minor crisis away from homelessness. Those at the DNC and the Center for American Progress and a dozen other neo-liberal think tanks collecting millions a year to maintain the economic status-quo have everything to gain and nothing to lose by continuing to polarize people based on "identity" in an effort to distract them from the profound structucal problems in our economy and our society. Unless and until people wake up and eject these grifters from the halls of power the Democratic party is destined to look very much like the Republican party, just peddling a different brand of bigoted idiocy to keep poor people from supporting their economic interests.

Do you know a source that collects together evidence for this and presents it in a way that's relatively easy to read through?

I think this is applicable.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/how-dem...

I think very few people realized the regulatory hazard of wealth. It's looking to me increasingly that capitalism as it is today is unsustainable because the wealthy in the market bribe regulators (for multiple, subtle definitions of bribe such as privately funded campaigns) to keep them in their dominant position.

I think ppl like buffet, gates contributed massively towards viewing rich as more tolerant, magnanimous and kind. They also aligned themselves on the right side of 'masse flame war around gender, race, sexuality'. If you are rich the best thing you can do to avoid pitchforks is to get on liberal side and seen by people and media and 'fighting their war'.

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