Hacker News Reader

The baby boomers didn't change a damned thing.

In Britain, liberalism was architected primarily by people who were part of our very old establishment. The decriminalisation of homosexuality was achieved largely by the work of Lord Wolfenden, Lord Pakenham and Arthur Gore (8th Earl of Arran). The same goes for most of the political changes we associate with modernity and progress - with the notable exception of Bevan and his peers, the people turning the wheels were mainly minor aristocrats in dusty tweed. A great many of the most significant changes were made contrary to public opinion, the most obvious being the abolition of the death penalty - a policy which most Britons still oppose.

The boomers credit themselves with having changed the world when they were young, broke and essentially powerless, but deny any credit to the generation that constituted the establishment at the time. Conversely, now that they control the majority of capital, make up the biggest electoral demographic and holds most of the elected offices, they deny responsibility.

The most destructive act of the baby boomers was creating a culture in which the individual is seen as having supremacy over the institution. The consequences are obvious and stark - a political system with single-digit approval ratings, where nobody feels represented and nobody feels responsible. A political culture defined not by fundamental ideological allegiance and difference, but by special pleading. There's no such thing as a socialist anymore, no such thing as a conservative or a trade unionist, just people with opinions. America always pretended to be classless but Britain has gone the same way, preferring the egoistic fantasy of an egalitarian society over the reality of one where power and wealth and privilege are still very much in force.

We're trapped in a solipsistic nightmare, where conspiracy theories have replaced an understanding of social power. Until the people who are in charge actually admit that they are in charge, we're fucked.

Also, it's easy to go out and protest and be unwashed when you have absolutely nothing to lose. The unfortunate youth of today are not as unfortunate as in 1968.

I don't understand why. Youth in 68 had everything that the youth has now.

Imo, two of the key triggers are missing:

1. There's no longer any military conscription, which in the 60s forced even the most temperamentally apolitical under-26-year-olds to pay attention at least somewhat, since it was (legally) impossible to just ignore the war and go about one's life.

2. While many black youth are still disaffected, there's no longer any de jure segregation, so what remains is a more amorphous disaffection lacking the sort of clear spark/goal that the civil rights movement had. Overall material conditions are also somewhat better, for at least some proportion.

The boomers have also presided over a period of unparalleled monetary inflation. They chose not to take hard decisions. Being an xer, I can totally relate to the concept of being trapped. The boomers are sitting on gazzilions of dollars of inflated wealth and god knows how much power that goes with it. It is not so much the lack of power that bothers me, but the conflict between playing by the rules defined by the boomers and the new hope of post materialism.

I think the xers and yers will remain conflicted generations.

>I think the xers and yers will remain conflicted generations.

Conflicted with each other? Or internal conflict?

The previous paragraph covers the issue of conflict between boomers and young generations, touching on the controlling forces of boomers conflicting with newer ideologies. So I think they meant to say that the x and y generations will remain in conflict with the boomers until the boomers grow too old to hold their power.

The problem I have with the invocation of post-materialism specifically to support this argument is that if post-materialism were manifest in the youngest generations, we'd have a lot of empowered voting and office-running youth overthrowing the boomer establishment. Post-materialists value freedom of speech and people collectively having power in political decisions more than they value material goods and even national order. Post-materialists would be fighting tooth and nail and leveraging every advantage they have against a corrupt, centralized material-obsessed authority.

A powerful post-materialist youth would leverage technology to empower their voices directly through the voting system and the lawmaking process. They would enable an open-source voting system with access to vote online and with publicly published by-vote data that associates votes to a generated unique key. When you voted, you would be given that key and then your association to that key would be destroyed. Thus, you'd be able to verify your vote was cast correctly and we could all verify voting data validity. The open-source voting system would ensure that there were no holes in this process.

A powerful post-materialist youth would reform lawmaking such that all bills had a single specific agenda with no riders (i.e., hidden pieces covering separate topics not covered in the abstract). They would ensure that every person could easily search for all the bills in consideration that covered topics they cared about and that the government actively marketed this data to the public.

A powerful post-materialist youth would have a crowd-sourced information platform for politics that tightly integrated with the searchable, taggable data. Think Reddit+Wikipedia for politics. With this there could be a wiki page for every issue and bill in discussion and a "subreddit" for every party and political action group to organize through.

A powerful post-materialist youth would develop these solutions and steamroll them into the status quo long before the boomers retired.

Maddox is highlighting that youth have not been exerting strong post-materialist influence in politics and joining a growing quorum of people saying, "Do more, care more, and you can actually shift ideologies and power structures to better align with your ideals."

The missing element to making this mainstream is a technology-focused social approach to reforming the voting system such that it is possible for the average working and school-going youth to develop and grow their understanding of the issues affecting all those that they care about by connecting them to those same people.

@Bleys, would that it were so.

I think mainstream culture is a bigger impediment to the changes you describe than voting system reform. But I certainly would like to see the kind of changes you describe.

The boomers credit themselves with having changed the world when they were young, broke and essentially powerless, but deny any credit to the generation that constituted the establishment at the time.

In the U.S. at least, I don't think anything would have changed with regards to civil rights for a while if it had been left to the establishment. Without the protests, boycotts, and other direct action of the Civil Rights Movement, I doubt that the white Northern establishment would've gotten the guts to move against the white Southern establishment: the fact that the white Southern establishment reacted so violently and lawlessly to the civil-rights protests was one of the factors that forced the timid establishment to act, lest they allow in effect another open southern rebellion. Up until the moment they were forced to act, the establishment generally thought the protestors were hotheads who should've stopped rocking the boat so dangerously. (The presence of even more "dangerous" hotheads was also useful for that; e.g. the existence of Malcolm X made it easier for MLK to position himself as a moderate partner offering a way out, whereas his demands were themselves initially seen as extreme.)

There was some spread in generations in the civil rights movement, especially among black southerners; famously Rosa Parks was born in 1913. But among whites, the participants in the protests were almost exclusively under 40.

I do agree that they've mostly grown up to be a disappointing establishment, though.

Rebellion against authority has a weird way of turning into its own authority. Or as Einstein said:

To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself.

>the abolition of the death penalty - a policy which most Britons still oppose.

I don't think this is entirely accurate. If by "most Britons" you mean "most Daily Mail readers" then maybe...

Occupy movement at its heart is a fight to wrest control of the world from baby-boomers, who are now old and selfishly willing to burn everyone else to protect their benefits.

Exactly.

I've run into more jaded baby boomers than anything else. And they justify it by "well, now I have a job" or "I'm too old now" or "The Internet is over my head." Their pie is the 401(k), come what may.

"The Internet is over my head."

This one is rather important I think. More so than other generations, the baby boomers seem to embrace ignorance of all things new as a virtue.

My grandparents used to go out of their way to not admit they were confused by technology. My parents and their friends? They embrace the notion.

The Occupy movement is about exactly the opposite of "me." It is primarily about the growing disparity in wealth and power, and how that disparity hurts everyone (including the 1%). A little disparity is fine. It gives us something to aspire to. Occupy's message is that the balance of wealth and power has shifted too far away from the reach of aspirations.

The occupy movement could of been about corruption & bailouts and how the government picks winners and losers that hurts everyone not directly involved (those picked as winners) (i.e. you and me). Instead Occupy turned into where's my bailout. They could've taken a principled position, but didn't wealth disparity is a good thing - as long as it's achieved in the appropriate ways (voluntary interaction).

We must be following different Occupy movements.

There is an actually valid concern that instead of guaranteeing credit default swaps in a handful of institutions, you could've spent the same amount of money propping up some of these underwater mortgages.

Same outcome - a bunch of public money goes towards restoring confidence in the system - but with significantly less significant social costs/moral hazards.

It was about the bailouts and corruption. In fact, anti-corruption is probably the single biggest message of the occupy movement. That sign saying "where's my bailout" was complaining about "where's our bailout". It's pointing out that only the banks got taken care of, while the rest of us seem to matter increasingly less. It's not asking for a handout, it's pointing to the discrepancy.

Also, if you're against corruption, massive and increasing wealth disparity is not a good thing. Put all the financial power in the hands of a few and every single time they'll wind up with all the political power as well. If you want an example of correlation between money and political power, you could look at SOPA.

I wasn't referring to the sign, I was referring to people there wanting a handout - wanting student loan forgiveness, wanting government sponsored grants/loans for starting companies, wanting government help in increasing the value of their home or money/tax incentives to pay their mortgage.

I really don't see where you got that idea from.

From visiting zuccotti park in person and talking to people there.

Their problem is that they did not have a strong detailed message that could be related. You had liberals and libertarians fighting over nonsense and you had a lot of misinformed people. Plus, they should have been protesting our Government officials and demanding that they work for the people instead of protesting Wall Street. It just turned into a mess and got even more disorganized, which made it easier for someone to point a camera in several people's faces and make them seem like an idiot or a "socialist (which seems to scare people)."

I cringed at a lot of the coverage, so I know what you mean. A lot of the organizers were very new to this sort of politics. From what I've read (no articles on hand), they've moved into an office and have started acting like a coherent organization.

I'm sure we'll see a round two, and it'll have a clear message and better organization.

I disagree pretty strongly, what I found most refreshing and "revolutionary" about the occupy movement was it's lack of a strong detailed message. It made it massively inclusive, it is not a one issue movement it is a new way of involving all kinds of people in the political process. That is what gave me hope (I'm cynical enough to know that it might not pan out as I'd like) it actually IS addressing the broken system the OP is complaining about.

The political process can only be corrupt as long as people aren't paying attention - I think the occupy movement did a great service in focusing attention on the inequalities inherent in the current system and provided a model for what democracy is supposed to be. People talking, debating and voting on the actual issues that affect them - when contrasted with the BS that is the congressional sausage factory and the media circus that surrounds it I know which I'd prefer to be the basis for a redefined version of democracy.

EDIT: typo

<The political process can only be corrupt as long as people aren't paying attention.> I hope it will be like that forever: here in Italy politicians don't even need to fake the formality of democracy, the dialogue with the "real world".[referring to the facts of 15th november 2011]

The lack of a strong detailed message did allow it to be massive and inclusive. But with no direction or goal, it's just a self-licking ice cream cone.

With no strong detailed message, it makes it really hard for politicians/media to argue against, but it makes it really easy for politicians/media to mock.

There no "we" in "I am the 99%". But Occupy hasn't put out and stood behind a coherent message, and probably never will, so it's a free-for-all to talk about what Occupy really is.

1. nobody can say what the occupy was about. the next guy will have a different opinion

2. It was always about wealth disparity. The little something to aspire to never existed. Everyone aspire large wealth disparity, or they are too busy making ends meet. It was always like that. See any previous human society or moment in history. Heck even the alpha male usually has most of the females

Forgot 3. If you are making ends meet, your best bet is always revolution. But the goal will still be the same, even if you have to use talks of equality to get it started

"Everyone aspire large wealth disparity"

I hear things like this a lot about human nature, and I try really hard to believe them, but at the end of the day I have to admit that I don't personally know a single person who thinks this way. Everyone I know would very much like to pay off their debt, have easy access to shelter, food, and entertainment for themselves and their loved ones, and not have to work but be able to do whatever they love doing as much as they want to do it. It is possible that there is not enough aggregate wealth in the world for everyone to be prosperous enough to achieve these things, so desiring them is equivalent to the desire for wealth disparity, but it is not the disparity itself. I am not suggesting that there are no people who desire disparity itself, only that I have trouble convincing myself that it is "everyone", since I don't know any.

you, and I, and pretty much everyone we know, are making ends meet.

trust me on this one. it may seems far fetched that in all your friends circle, or mine, we don't know any rich person. but it is so.

We are all Class C, by the original definition that classify modern social classes by their aspirations and goals. not that non-sense sensus stuff. The successful guys in this forum, that made millions with their hard work, are class B. we have not even indirect connection to class A.

tl;dr do not base society on your personal knowledge.

Admittedly, I missed the dichotomy in your original post between those making ends meet and those aspiring to wealth disparity - I thought you meant that even those just trying to make ends meet aspire to wealth disparity, which is why egalitarian movements fail, when what I think you meant is that once people stop having to make ends meet, they then begin to aspire wealth disparity.

I would be very interested to see the data you are basing your knowledge of society on, since it must be outside your personal experience.

Also I'm not familiar with the modern social class definition system that you speak of, where can I read about that?

can't find it myself... will ask my athropologist friends later, as i'm curious to the actual terms too.

the original paper that mentioned A, B, C class outlined them by: C class, aims for sustenance. B class, takes sustenance as granted, aim for goods. C class, takes sustenance and goods for granted, aim for status.

This societal passiveness isn't accidental: it has been deliberately engineered in North America. The documentary "The Century of the Self" breaks this down better than anything else I've seen/read. There is also, within activist circles, the belief in a mythical version of history in which pacifism, isolated from militance, is what catalyzed change in the past.

Regarding the self-interest of the young, it's a rational thing. If young people today weren't saying "where's mine" then they'd be stupid. During the baby boom there were decent jobs because globalization hadn't happened yet and corporations still had to rely on domestic labor. Reliance on domestic labor also means the elite values having decent public institutions, which strengthen the labor force. Now not only do we have globalization but also systematic looting. Young people get to look forward to having it significantly worse economic prospects than their parents.

The century of self

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyPzGUsYyKM

It's just fantastic and very eye opening. Thanks for reminding me of it.

I was in downtown Toronto on February 15, 2003, freezing my ass off in a protest march of nearly 100,000 people who were, in turn, part of a global march of between 10 and 20 million people protesting the invasion of Iraq. It was the single biggest protest in history, and it was against a war that hadn't even started yet.

Popular protest against the Vietnam War didn't take off until the war had been grinding for several years.

Sorry if this is rubbing salt in a wound... but, that protest really didn't have any effect. Did it? I agree with Maddox here that both protests (while impressively sizable and passionate) were equally ineffective.

It's an open (and probably unanswerable) question whether the invasion would have gone differently if not for all the popular global protest (though I can imagine that the US would have been less restrained if they knew the world wasn't watching).

I was responding to the OP's contention that the Boomer generation was more committed to protesting in support of social justice than people are these days.

Yes I remember that massive worldwide protest against the impending invasion of Iraq. But the US was still able to get 20+ countries to go with them into war. Based on the "get off your ass and actually do something" theory of the OP, why didn't this have any effect?

I remember that date, being in New York myself. Seeing the police embrace their militaristic fantasy of being under attack; seeing the futility of organized dissent when it came to changing the course of an autonomous government. That was my last protest. "Cypherpunks write code".

Maybe this is a little bit OT, but I think the biggest problem with the baby boomers is that, 12 years after '68, Reagan is elected and the whole generation basically turned their back on their youthful idealism and proceeded to create the mess we are in now.

> We protested, we marched, we did whatever we thought it took to affect change. We took the side of the oppressed: blacks, women, gays, the poor and homeless, the environment, and most of all, we protested an illegal and immoral war.

If by "we" you mean some of the baby boom generation, then you are right. But let's not pretend that a huge group of people like the baby boomers have a unified approach to injustice and oppression. After all, many of the baby boom generation and have and continue to support oppression in their communities and as official state policy, but that doesn't mean that every baby boomer supports those things.

Also, the struggle against oppression in the US has a much longer and deeper history than prior to the late 60s, so don't pretend that the baby boomers were the saving grace to these movements as that erases the hard work and suffering that many people had to go through.

> All I see with this worldwide Occupy movement is people complaining, "Where's mine?" It seems like it's all about "me", not "us".

A lot of the anger stems from being denied opportunities that were afforded to the boomers. The American Dream was available to you in ways that our generation will never know.

We've been sold on this notion of security and prosperity that no longer exists. Yet, we're still supposed to support the preceding generation as they retire and draw benefits that won't exist for us.

A Boomer rant and it's all about the "me" generation. Film at 11.

> It seems like it's all about "me", not "us".

You really don't see the connection between the baby boomers's rebellions and the fact that their grandkids have this attitude?

"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."

- Samuel Adams

In short:

"In my day, our protest marches were up hill, both ways!"

It's true that the 60's was a free-er time.

But it is wrong to say that you "ended the war and changed the world".

The "war" ended in 1975, long after all the protesting has slowed to a crawl. And the ending of the war mainly had to do with an exhaustion of resources amidst an economic and oil crisis, and, well, actually losing the damn thing. There is such a thing as a lost war.

Furthermore, people mainly protested not because the war was "illegal and immoral", but primarily because of the draft and how it affected them (or people they knew). Lesson learned: the government used only pro soldiers for their wars from them on, and no protests of that scale and that extend occurred again.

The baby-boomer, sixties "rebellion" was in all, a failure. It didn't "stop the war", and it didn't "change the world". It ended itself in the conformism and consumerism of the seventies and in a drug and "self-discovery" haze.

If the world has indeed changed since the 60s, it's for the worst, in the political sense, concerning society, freedom, public and international policy (technology and science have of course improved, but those two always do, since the dawn of time, and exponentially since around 1600).

Now, how about the societal change regarding the treatment of blacks? Well, that was due to their organized protests and political action (from the action around Rosa Parks to the Alabama march). And, to return to the point of Maddox, this is what the other sixties movements lacked (since SDS dissolved into irrelevance), and what we lack today.

If baby-boomers' sixties was a self-absorbed failure, there was indeed a time when Americans fought and won very significant rights. It was when they were actually organized, agitated, and fought (often to death), to gain their labour rights, regarding working conditions, eight hour day, etc. Here's an example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre

Without political action and determination, you cannot have change. Blacking out a webpage is idiotic. "But it spreads awareness". So? What is the viewer of your webpage supposed to do with this new found awareness? Until you can answer that, it's all in vain. And writing to your congressman is idiotic. What makes him "your" congressman? Even a boycott is silly, if it's just about individuals making a choice, instead of being the co-ordinated action of some group with a minimum program and coherency.

>Blacking out a webpage is idiotic. "But it spreads awareness". So? What is the viewer of your webpage supposed to do with this new found awareness?

Most of the websites I saw participating in the blackout urged people to contact local congresspeople. Wikipedia, for example, featured a form that would show contact information given a zip code.

While not at the level of mass protests, it's certainly doing something.

Further, awareness does matter. In my local paper, the blackouts made the front page. That exposes the issue to a wide range of people that would never have been aware anything was happening.

Are there other actions people could have taken to protest SOPA/PIPA? Sure, and some are probably more optimal than the blackout. Even so, I would disagree that the blackout was ineffective, much less "idiotic".

What an odd and misguided rant. It's like the assholes who tell you if you don't like the laws, run for office. "What makes him "your" congressman?" Whoa. Deeeep, dude.

Well, those "assholes" might just say it to discourage you from attempting anything, but in the whole, they are right.

If you don't like the laws, do run for office, or at least, run to ensure that someone who shares your dislike for the laws, get's into office and gets the job done.

Without that, all the blackening of blogs, symbolic ribbons etc don't change a thing.

In fact, the very meaning of a republic is that of the handling of things/issues that belong to all and affect all ("res publica", public things, in latin).

Politics weren't supposed to be some specialized profession, for professional politicians, but the duty of the citizen of a democracy.

Same for ancient Athens, who invented all that democracy thing. Public officials there were chosen at random, as to better represent the majority (this incidentally solves the funding problem). So you could end up a congressman (or something equivalent for the day), like you could be chosen for jury duty today.

(Incidentally, Athens and Rome declined when their citizens stopped caring about the "public things", and demagogues and dictators seized the power).

As if awareness is completely useless in the fight. Even congresspeople admitted to not understanding the law. If I can do something (write them, call them) to help them understand, that does nothing?

Sure, I'm not willing to die for Reddit. So, I guess you got me there.

Well, congresspeople can admit to "not understanding the law", but that is just bollocks. You really believe highly educated guys in Washington, with a lot of lawyers among them for good measure, don't understand a law and it's consequences?

It's not about them not understanding some obscure technical details of how the internet works. It's about what the intent and spirit of the law is, and that they understand all too well.

"You're not willing to die for Reddit", you say. Irony aside, is that what internet freedom and SOPA amount to you, the closing (or not) of Reddit?

Thanks for the intelligent reply, Batista. Just a few nits...

The "war" ended in 1975, long after all the protesting has slowed to a crawl.

The war "officially" ended in 1975, but it really ended with de-escalation and the ending of the draft years earlier by our activism. Make no mistake about it, LBJ, one of the most powerful presidents ever, was brought to his knees, not by his political opponents, but by us. March 31, 1968 was the beginning of the end of that war.

Furthermore, people mainly protested not because the war was "illegal and immoral", but primarily because of the draft and how it affected them (or people they knew).

One of many counter-examples: the My Lai Massacre. Do you remember how aghast the American public was that things like this were happening on television almost every night "for no apparent reason"? People have always really known right from wrong. The difference is when they decide to do something about it.

Now, how about the societal change regarding the treatment of blacks? Well, that was due to their organized protests and political action (from the action around Rosa Parks to the Alabama march)

I imagine there are quite a few who would disagree with that, from the urban infernos of the late 1960's even up to today.

It was when they were actually organized, agitated, and fought (often to death)...

I think we need to sacrifice more, but I don't suggest sacrificing our lives. Ironically, mine was a generation that did sacrifice the lives of our martyrs. To this day, I often wonder how different the world would be if the opponents of change hadn't murdered JFK, MLK, RFK, or Malcom X, or crushed the lives of countless others on college campuses (Kent State, 1970), Stonewall, or in the streets of Newark, Detroit, Watts, and a hundred other places.

...to gain their labour rights...

Kinda ironic that one of the worst cripplers of today's economy are the entitlements won by the overextension of organized labor (see auto industry or almost any local government).

I'd stay and debate more, but a client just called and I'm already 27% behind quota this week. (Oh how times have changed.)

I agree with pretty much everything you said, except for one thing: the sixties protesters certainly did change the world, just not the way they wanted to:

* They ensured Ronald Reagan's landslide victory in the race for governor of California, whose campaign promise was to shitcan UC president Clark Kerr and "clean up the mess at Berkeley," which I believe he fulfilled his first day in office.

* They ensured that Lyndon B. Johnson, arguably the most liberal president in US history and most powerful proponent of the 196[48] Civil Rights Acts, would not even attempt to seek reelection.

* They incited a riot at the 1968 Democratic Nation Convention, ensuring a landslide victory for somebody as unpopular as Richard Nixon.

In short, they empowered the opposition. Being a loud vocal minority only ruffles the feathers of the majority and calls them into action, which is why no political leaders are going to touch the "occupy movement" with a ten-foot pole.

The anti-SOPA movement on the other hand is a different because at the end of the day, it threatens a multi-billion dollar industry. Whether Wikipedia and Reddit can rally your "awareness" about it or not, the Googles of the world will still fight it tooth and nail to protect their own investments, and their money speaks just as loud as the entertainment industry's. For that reason, I never really believed SOPA or PIPA stood a chance.

While I wholeheartedly agree with your overall sentiment that the baby boomers poisoned the well of liberalism for the next few generations, I feel compelled to point out that Nixon's landslide was in 1972. 1968 was one of the closest elections of the century.