I'm unconvinced. The class system is, at its core, money. And short of eBay allowing people to sell second hand items peer to peer, I really don't think the internet has enabled economic mobility all that much. A select few in Silicon Valley have gotten very rich, certainly, but an effect on the population at large? Maybe it'll happen one day, but even stuff like Bitcoin has somehow transformed from "the new cash" to "the new speculative investment that promises to make people with disposable income even richer".
The fact that the technological requirements for small new businesses and cottage content industries have changed shouldn’t be confused with an improvement in the opportunity landscape as a whole.
If anything, these “businesses” - especially the content creators - are more like digital feudalisms, as (mostly) low-status low-value workers try to scratch out an existence on territory owned by a single entity they have no democratic influence on.
The reality is that wealth concentration among the hyper-rich is accelerating as they capture an ever-increasing share of global productivity.
If the Internet were likely to fix this, we’d have seen some evidence of this happening by now.
But there is exactly zero evidence for this, and even less reason to believe that it can happen, given where we are today.
The only thing that might change this is total disintermediation - open, distributed, publicly owned, non-corporate hardware and software infrastructure, including search, security, content distribution, storage, and applications.
You only have to think about that for a few moments to see how far we are from that kind of Internet, and just how locked down, siloed, chokepointed, gated, and obsessively monetised the Internet we have today is.
Except cottage content and product industries can now sell to virtually the entire planet. That simply wasn't available before.
>as (mostly) low-status low-value workers
Here you're projecting your own bias against them. I'm not suggesting "the system" is without flaws, but the average joe seems to be doing alright in general, especially if you consider average joe historically and globally.
>The reality is that wealth concentration among the hyper-rich is accelerating as they capture an ever-increasing share of global productivity.
Wealth concentration among the hyper-rich doesn't concern me in the least. Generally speaking wealth is created by providing value, not taking it.
>If the Internet were likely to fix this, we’d have seen some evidence of this happening by now.
The internet is in the process of unseating media monopolies and democratizing information. The poorest of the poor across the world have access to information that was previously only available to the wealthiest who could attend universities in rich countries. The internet has allowed small businesses with basically no infrastructure to reach the entire global market. It's allowed families to keep in touch instantaneously across oceans.
>You only have to think about that for a few moments to see how far we are from that kind of Internet, and just how locked down, siloed, chokepointed, gated, and obsessively monetised the Internet we have today is.
You're comparing the internet to some fantasy you have. I'm comparing the internet to the world before the internet.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/news/economy/us-startups-nea...
Whatever combination of factors is at work suppressing small business creation since the 2008 recession is not being overcome by the advantages you listed.
Right. I'm sure that the fact that the leading internet companies are run by Harvard (FB) and Stanford (Google) grads will not interfere with the Revolution in any way.
Before the internet it used to take 10-20 years to foment discord against a particular group. Now we have a new boogeyman every 18 months and it's always other plebes or pariahs-- never the ruling elite.
These individuals are distractions, nothing more. Shkreli literally launched a sortie against the plebes by means of his obscene price gouging (which isn't even what put him in jail-- if not for his crimes against the elite, he'd be a free man!), and prolific sex offenders like Weinstein simply cannot be defended-- like Roman Polanski and Bill Cosby, he's just beyond redemption.
Meanwhile:
* All the internet attention in the world (or the Wall Street protests) didn't result in anyone responsible for the 2008 economic meltdowns seeing the inside of a courtroom for anything more than a deposition.
* The Wells Fargo C-level who encouraged half the company to commit fraud walked away with a severance package.
* The Equifax CEO walked away with a severance package after the largest consumer data breach in US history.
* Mitt Romney made a personal fortune bankrupting companies and decimating the retirement plans of their associated employees. Then he ran for president.
* Snowden released a bunch of documents confirming what a lot of us already believed, which caused some commotion and pit half the country against itself in a philosophical war over whether his actions were heroic or traitorous. Meanwhile while that pointless debate raged, life at the NSA continued under new project names and tighter controls.
Of all of the damage these individuals caused, only Snowden, a commoner, has a warrant out for his arrest. Of all of these, only Snowden's actions had no impact on the average American. We squabble on Facebook about his pointless actions while we're actively being fleeced by the other four guys.
Plenty of attention has been drawn to these matters. But nothing changes. Internet outrage is cheap and divisive.
If the last two years have shown anything, it's that the "common man" in America is extremely susceptible to cheap propaganda and misinformation.
Half the country would happily watch the entire thing burn down as long as "their team" is doing the burning.
The "plebs", so to speak, have never been more controlled than they are today. If anything, I'm more pessimistic than ever.
Powerful interests will be able to harness the massive amounts of data collected by social media to carefully formulate and craft the exact message they want to control who they want and people who I thought would easily see through that are now completely brainwashed into believing things that they would have laughed at 20 years ago.
The rich will be fine, and the poor will eat each other alive, just as they're told to by the other rich men on the TV.
Compare that to Google/FB where each person gets a catered experience. It would take an immense effort in data collection and analysis to find out just how hard they're screwing everyone. Going by all of the online scams I've had to ward friends and family away from (which came up on page-one Google searches BTW), my guess would be "very hard".
I don't buy it. First of all, the class system is about material interests - real physical tangible interests - and not about feelings. Even if 99% of the people live in a world of ideas, the ruling class, by virtue of the fact that they have to bargain over laws (multi hundred page documents that decide taxation and allocation as well as employee and business rights), live in the world of the material.
The American populace lives, and probably since at least the mid 20th century has lived, in a world of ideas. By this I mean, the country is torn asunder by feelings about abortion, race, gender and so forth, immigration [edit: and also celebrity-lead culture] -- all issues that, guess what, don't even touch the interests of the .01%.
#MeToo poses no threat whatsoever to any class system.
http://www.thebookoflife.org/countries-for-losers-countries-...
I live in the U.S., but I think I'd prefer to live in one of the countries for losers.
... from the article:
"Here is the list of the world’s top Loser Countries: (.nl, .de, .ch, .no, .dk)"
As someone who travels to these countries frequently (rsync.net has a Zurich location) I can certainly get on board with the desire to move to Switzerland. It is a nicer country than the US.
However, it is a ridiculous notion that the social success of these countries (and of Japan, which is conspicuously absent from that list) is due simply to some bad legislation here or there ... just a few technocratic choices made the wrong way.
In reality, the reason things are so nice in Switzerland and Norway and Japan are because they have extremely homogenous populations and cultural legacies.
It's easy to expand your circle of empathy to people whose names are also Lars Larson[1], just like yours is.
They didn't invent jazz, though ...
[1] Or Hiro Tanaka.
Which may explain why you can't say that without being called a racist.
Also, I'm not sure the facts back you up. Is the USA really more diverse than Canada? Is the UK really more diverse than Germany?
85% of those "foreigners" are your fellow Europeans. It would be like me saying Florida is less homogeneous because some people from Utah moved there. Except Utah is further away from Florida than any country in Europe is from any other. Switzerland is quite homogeneous.
Yeah, this is something I've been thinking about for a while too. It's very convenient that the whole 'Occupy' thing got followed up by a huge push for social justice beliefs and comments about deplorables. Like someone didn't want the attention to be focused on the rich, and thought a bit of interclass warfare would be a nice distraction about now.
You can see a huge media political shift about this time too.
But hey, maybe I'm coming across as paranoid here.
Stated this way, this appears to handwave real problems away. Yes, racial and gender issues are often exploited for political gain; but these issues usually have a basis in real problems.
Why should a member of the bottom 70% care that the top marginal corporate rate was just cut from 36% to 21%?
Uh, have you been paying attention to campus protesters?
The US has gotten richer and richer, if it functioned properly everyone could have enough without resorting to any radical policies.
It's not quite that simple, due to human psychology. Even if people are wealthy on a global and historical scale, relative poverty will still cause problems.
Maybe. A prerequisite would be for most people to realise that class is more important than gender and race.
https://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/...
What definition are you using for economic depression?
[0] https://dqydj.com/united-states-household-income-brackets-pe...
While part of my agrees with you that in some areas 50k/yr gets eaten up quickly we are looking at having $500 or $1000 on hand that is either 1% or 2% of annual income in savings. While I have sympathetic to a significant portion of the country ~20%-25% that cannot do that, I hard time believing 40% of Americans could not trim $500 off their expenses each year and save it.
Things have gotten worse as capital consolidated all the industries. Now we have an illusion of choice. When you go to the supermarket, there seems to be tons of variety of products by many companies. After all, there are so many brands. But all these brands are owned by a handful of companies. The same thing with banking. The last financial crisis was used by the FED ( a banking cartel ) to get large multinational banks to buy up smaller regional banks. Regional newspapers are being bought up by major media companies like news corp.
> The evil rich people figured out that if you start a gender and race war among the 99%, you can distract them from the fact that they're all being economically exploited and subjected to wage slavery.
It's not just identity politics. It's also the bread and circuses. Nothing more poignant than the upcoming superbowl where the mindless stuff their faces while watching advertisements for 4 hours.
> The internet will almost certainly spawn a social movement to destroy the class system in the US.
That's naive. The internet will almost certainly be used to reinforce it. More distractions, more propaganda and more divisions. Look how quickly the wealthy has come down on the internet and social media already. Look at the amount of censorship. Look what happened to youtube trending page and google news. Youtube trending is now all SNL, major news channels and late night shows. Google news is now all washingtonpost, nytimes, etc.
I hope you are right, but experience tells me money wins and the masses are not intelligent enough or united enough to challenge the wealthy. Our political system doesn't allow for it, nor does our education system or the media or anything else.
There is no collectivist, national (or global) hivemind or concensus among wealthy people about how to oppress the lower classes. The implication of the original post I've responded to is absurd. Wealthy people are more likely than not to be narcissistic and selfish, so any organization is really a prisoner's dilemma association of convenience, at best.
Mark Zuckerberg in alone in a room with an angry mob would be much more civilized than Mark Zuckerberg in a room with Rupert Murdoch - there is just a bunch of wealth people whose voice carries far due to their organizations, wealth, and power, who generally have no allegiance to one other, each espousing their own disparate viewpoints, which generally do not involve wealth re-distribution
Wealthy interests, like you are describing, and as the article portrays, exist in microcosms or small interests, and they conflict with other wealthy interests. One wealthy group might want to manipulate consumer group X to do Z and has to destroy organization B to manipulate consumer group X to do Y.
That's just one portion of the comment I'm responding to - the rest is just some rambling from a psychotic someone who will be carrying a torch to something while snarling the gripe du jour some day.
it's called socialism. it's been spawned already, and it's growing. people can thank bernie sanders for its major popularization, but he won't be around when the dream is complete-- if it ever is.
It might serve their richness but that does not mean they have hidden agendas in regards to it.
If everyone willingly walked in to a pit of spikes it is their own fault. People should be allowed to act out their own free will as long as that act does not fuck with other people.
If someone tricked them with lies to do that then there is a problem.
This is the most insidious part.
The media in the US has historically been 100% controlled by rich people, and all major media still is.
The evil rich people figured out that if you start a gender and race war among the 99%, you can distract them from the fact that they're all being economically exploited and subjected to wage slavery.
The US has gotten richer and richer, if it functioned properly everyone could have enough without resorting to any radical policies. But as long as 70%+ of Americans are wallowing in economic depression there will be no lasting social progress. Just the way most rich people hope it stays.
The internet will almost certainly spawn a social movement to destroy the class system in the US. People are just waking up to how bad it is. The #MeToo movement only happened because rich people are losing media control, and it's just one of many to come.