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from the no-one's-leaving-until-we-have-unanimous-agreement dept.
The rise of populism has rattled the global political establishment. Brexit came as a shock, as did the victory of Donald Trump. Much head-scratching has resulted as leaders seek to work out why large chunks of their electorates are so cross.
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The answer seems pretty simple. Populism is the result of economic failure. The 10 years since the financial crisis have shown that the system of economic governance which has held sway for the past four decades is broken. Some call this approach neoliberalism. Perhaps a better description would be unpopulism.Unpopulism meant tilting the balance of power in the workplace in favour of management and treating people like wage slaves. Unpopulism was rigged to ensure that the fruits of growth went to the few not to the many. Unpopulism decreed that those responsible for the global financial crisis got away with it while those who were innocent bore the brunt of austerity.
2017 Davos says: The 99% should just try harder.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:58PM (8 children)
Your entire populist list is an affront to some of the richest, most powerful people before the measure was passed:
- Social Security
a tax on labor so high that it is broken out as a separate line-item on all paychecks, and required by law to be 50% hidden from the workers.
- Medicare
- Medicaid
meddling in medical reimbursement since 1965
- anti-trust laws, including the breakups of Standard Oil, US Steel, and Bell Telephone.
Ask a Rockefeller what the breakup of Standard Oil did for them?
- direct election of senators
How many senators were being selected rather than elected by the old process? The "selectors" of Senators only did so at high cost because it benefited them, and apparently it happened often enough that needed to be addressed. Stripped of (a piece of) their political influence, the ex-Senator selectors lost what was a valuable tool for them to shape the laws.
- referendum and recall in many states
Same.
- the EPA
Oh my - the direct enemy of business everywhere. When has EPA compliance ever positively impacted corporate profits (unless the corporation is specifically in the business of EPA compliance)?
- the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts
A bigger pool of voters, a new diverse population with additional rights - can only make it harder to control things from the top.
- abolition of slavery in the northern states
Same.
- the legal right to form labor unions
!
I'm mostly surprised that populism has been sleeping for so long, I guess we've been distracted with prosperity, shiny new toys, free communication and such.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @05:03PM
"Populist party" is an oxymoron as old as Rome (the populares were the equivalent just before the collapse of the Republic). Factions ("parties") arise in oligarchies, systems of government where a few people (a senate, parliament, commission, etc.) are chosen by some criteria of worthiness ("the best candidate for the job") to make decisions and others to execute those decisions. Populism, in its purest form, belongs to democracy, the system of government in which people collectively (not through representatives, but directly) make decisions and executives are chosen by lot and in multiples that spread power broadly through the body of citizens.
A "populist party" is simply an oligarchic faction who enacts the will of the elite by pretending to champion the masses instead of pretending to superior qualifications.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:46PM (3 children)
> When has EPA compliance ever positively impacted corporate profits
Sometimes it has! Shocking, I know. Sometimes these industrialists get so stuck on the way they've always done things that they would almost rather commit murder than change, even when it is a change that directly benefits them as well as everyone else.
As a general rule, if your process is creating excessive pollution, you may be wasting money. You may be throwing out valuable byproducts. For instance, consider the practice of gas flaring.
As another example of what could there possibly be not to like about this. sure wish the EPA or the DOT would improve traffic lights. We waste a lot of time sitting at dumb red lights that can't tell there's no traffic on the cross street. At least the electric car will end the waste from idling at a red light.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 30 2017, @03:52PM (2 children)
Change is risk. Always flared off the gas wasting potentially $50M per year in resources? What's the cost (base+risk) of changing the process?
Base cost may only be $25M, indicating potential ROI in 6 months, but if there's $2B of product flowing through this process per year, even a 5 day shutdown could mean another $27M in losses, now ROI is out at a year, and that's just the "good case" shutdown risk, actual shutdown times could range from 0 to 60 days worst case. What do you think happens to management's bonus if they get shutdown for 60 days, losing almost $300M, while attempting to chase a $50M/year efficiency gain?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Thursday March 30 2017, @06:45PM (1 child)
Industrialists are as anti-improvement as everyone else. More so, actually. If you have a good thing, you want to maintain it.
Over and over, the music and entertainment industries have fought change that ultimately was to their benefit. They were opposed to player pianos, AM radio, the cassette tape, the VCR (remember Valenti's infamous histrionics likening the VCR to the Boston Strangler?), the CD burner, the mp3 format, and now, the Internet. They seriously seemed to think it was reasonable to demand that no one use new technology that might disrupt their crummy business models. And they've been wrong. Every single time. They lost, and their business grew enormously as new technology greatly increased access.
It's the same with the automotive industry. They didn't want to make cars safer, really safer, because that might cost them more money. Tons of low hanging fruit that they didn't want to pick, easy stuff like seatbelts and headrests. Most incredible was some of the astonishing waste they built into their cars. Lot of 1960s era cars can be vastly improved just by adding a 5th speed to the 4 speed transmission. Even more, sacrificing economy for pure cosmetics, in the person of the typical radiator grill that is much wider than the radiator. Makes the engine compartment into a rigid drag chute mounted on the front of the car. Instead, they treated the public to incessant whining that forcing them to improve was incredibly expensive and would bankrupt them. They were wrong.
And of course we have the oil industry, running propaganda campaigns to deny that there is Global Warming, so they can keep on selling oil.
Because of this long history of fighting against good changes, industry doesn't have much credibility.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 30 2017, @08:26PM
Oh, I wouldn't say industry has no credibility, I'd say they have negative credibility - you can virtually count on them to lie cheat and steal as much as they can - it's like an adversarial process - they make something people want, and they do it in the most "risk averse, cost effective" manner possible - both of which are externalizing as many costs as possible. They say they're benefiting the consumers with low prices, but a bigger lie has never been told - prices are set by what the buyers will pay, not what the sellers can sell for - profits are determined by the difference between sales price and production cost, and it is the law of the corporations to maximize profits, again by externalizing as many costs as possible - to the environment, labor forces, taxpayer funded subsidies, etc.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday March 29 2017, @08:03PM (2 children)
Constantly and by design. If it wasn't so damn sad I'd find it hilarious how many people miss this. The EPA exists in order to immunize polluters from lawsuits. The cost of complying with the relatively weak (and often wholly inadequate) EPA standards is FAR lower than the cost of dealing with lawsuits from the people whose water you are poisoning to do business.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 29 2017, @09:49PM (1 child)
"When has EPA compliance ever positively impacted corporate profits (unless the corporation is specifically in the business of EPA compliance)?"
Constantly and by design. If it wasn't so damn sad I'd find it hilarious how many people miss this. The EPA exists in order to immunize polluters from lawsuits. The cost of complying with the relatively weak (and often wholly inadequate) EPA standards is FAR lower than the cost of dealing with lawsuits from the people whose water you are poisoning to do business.
O.K. - good point, EPA compliance is cheaper than lawsuits, but pre-EPA environmental contamination lawsuits were relatively rare, and sometimes the EPA limits actually do take things farther than necessary to protect the environment - as you say they are usually inadequate, but mostly they're just arbitrary.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday March 29 2017, @10:04PM
Historically the EPA was created to head off a rising flood of them, however, as awareness and scientific understanding of the negative effects had just hit critical mass.
If the EPA had not been created, then the insurance companies would have effectively made the regulations, and it stands to reason they'd tend to be tighter than what we have now, because they'd have to pay whenever a court decided they'd gotten it wrong, a worry the EPA has removed from the calculations.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?