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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, 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.
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